LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 42 – Sunday, 26th APRIL

As I had to replenish my meds I visited the pharmacy this morning, giving me a representative view of the effects of the loosening of the lockdown in respect of children under 14.

   There were plenty of kids around and with the exception of one child none of them was wearing a mask and neither was the parent.  The kids were on scooters and bikes and in one incidence on a skateboard.  The paseo was fairly full and there were people on the beach.  The fact that this is notable in a seaside town speaks volumes for what we have been going through!

     Perhaps it is naive to suppose otherwise but the kids acted as though there was nothing wrong and that there had been nothing wrong.  If that totally understandable reaction of the kids is transferred to the parents, or even more disturbingly has come from the parents, then the virus results in a fortnight are going to give pause for thought.

     If things go according to the plan outlined by the Spanish government, then next week we may see a further loosening of the restrictions, and adults will be able to exercise outside too.  What exactly that might mean is not clear at the moment – but the idea of being able to go for a bike ride at least would be something to look forward to.

     Whatever happens in the immediate future, I think the idea of breaking down the in-house seclusion will gain an inevitable momentum that will be very difficult to reign in again.

     There are hundreds of people in Spain dying every day from Covid-19, the crisis is nowhere near over, but the mind set is looking towards some sort of conclusion.  And that is dangerous.

Meanwhile in Britain, tomorrow sees the return of the incompetent politician who went out of his way to get infected with Corvid-19 and who ‘leads’ a government that dithered at the start of the crisis ensuring the grotesque figures of infected and dead that we have now.

     One wonders how he will stage his return and then how he will divide his time between trying to explain what has gone on and working towards a no-deal Brexit.  I shudder for the future of my country.

     Talking of shuddering, Cummins the creepy power behind the empty throne is a participating member of what should be a purely scientific advisory committee.  The revelation in The Guardian about his membership over the weekend has sparked a controversy, but given the way that this government reacts to such things, I wonder just how much traction such a revelation will have.

The continuing story of printing out the final draft copy of The Coast of Memory has now reached epic proportions.  The problem is the ink.  God alone knows what sort of depraved electronic jiggery-pokery there is inside a printer that limits the usefulness of the ink in cartridges, but the woeful capacity of the replacements that I have used in the printing is beyond astonishing.  I suspect that there is some artificial limiting device that is able to override the obvious and audible reserves of ink in the cartridge and ensure that it is inoperable.  I refuse to give up, but the last printing was less than satisfactory.

     I might even end up going to a commercial outlet.  Except, of course, all of those are closed at the moment.  Ah, the travails of the would be publisher are never over!

And tomorrow is the next on line Catalan meeting!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 41 – Saturday, 25th APRIL

It has been a long time since I considered the implications of a word like sarcasm.  It was usually enough to remember the notable exchanges between Whistler and Wilde, especially the exchange of Oscar hearing Whistler say something clever and his then saying, “I wish I had said that!” and Whistler quipping, “You will, Oscar, you will!”  Now that is sarcasm at a high level: clever, witty and true!

     Which brings us to the ignoble piece of narcissistic trash that is the current president of the United States of America.  Even for him he has plumbed a new low in trying to pretend that his “Let them drink Dettol!” was an example of sarcasm, used as a form of ‘sarcasm’ to taunt the members of the press.  I watched that particular piece of the press conference and the idiot said it with what passes for sincerity with such an empathy-lacking sociopath such as himself to a member of his scientific advisory panel.  Trump is a crap actor in the same way as he is crap at all aspects of a life.  For what I saw to be sarcasm, Trump would have to be a sophisticated, articulate, Machiavellian, consummate thespian with high comedic skills.  Trump, that is not!

     I refuse to believe that Trump has any conception of irony or sarcasm, even though his entire existence and his present position exemplify the concepts!

The British total of dead from Covid-19 has now gone over the 20,000 that the scientific advisors said would be a limit that would indicate that we had done well to contain the disease.  So, we have done badly, because not only are we over the total of 20k but also the figures that we have at the present give only an indication of what the true numbers are and will be.

     Yet again the testing put in place by the government has failed as the testing opportunities have crashed for the second day running, one wonders how the government is going to spin that disaster in the sequence of disasters that have marked their management of the crisis.

Tomorrow in Spain is the release of the Plague Kids into society.  No one seems entirely sure of the exact rules for the release of the kids, but it will be interesting to see how the general population interpret them – at least from our limited viewpoint defined by the house!

     I will watch the news with a great deal of interest to see how the rules apply generally.

Today has been one of those days that simply seem to slip by and one wonders what one has done to justify the gift of 24 hours.  To be fair to me, I have (I think) come to a final draft for the chapbook, The Coast of Memory.  Tomorrow a final print out and checking and then, as far as I am concerned, it is done!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 40 – Friday, 24rd APRIL

Years ago, when I was a volunteer on Cardiff AIDS Helpline, part of the duties of the volunteer was to staff the phones so that you could answer questions on the disease from members of the public who were able to ask for information in a safe environment where their anonymity was guaranteed.  It was very rewarding and volunteers were only allowed to take phone calls when they had undergone a fairly rigorous period of training.

     I remember, in one of the training sessions where we were being presented with simulations of calls one of the trainers, after listening to my responses said, “A little judgemental there, Stephen!”  I put it down to my being a teacher where there is an obvious overarching sense of direction and intent in the pedagogic approach.  But, with the Helpline, it was all about the caller: whatever the caller said and whatever the caller talked about, the volunteer had to go with it and suspend judgement.  I found it refreshing!  Whatever the caller had done, was doing or thought about doing, I was only there to give unbiased explanations and to give advice if asked.  I heard some shocking things but I learned not to judge only to supply facts to give the callers the information they needed to answer their questions and to give them clarity in the direction that best suited them.

     In the early days of the AIDS epidemic ignorance was the great killer.  In spite of the eventual mass advertising campaigns, the sometimes-gnomic approach was not direct enough for the basic information to get to the bulk of the population and some of the questions asked showed a shocking lack of understanding.

     One caller asked if it was possible for, “Me to give myself AIDS if I cut myself?”  While another when being told that the AIDS virus could be killed with a weak solution of bleach asked, “Couldn’t you inject that into somebody to kill the virus in them?”

     I was reminded of my time with the Helpline when reading and listening to Trump in one of his latest deranged pronouncements where he seems to be urging the use of internal UV treatment and the ingestion of bleach as a way of combating the Covid-19 virus!  30 years later and still the same level of ignorance, and this time not a random anonymous caller from Cardiff but the so-called leader of the free world who, from the time of his inauguration has spoken, “some weird shit” as Bush put it.

     At one time you could smile at the antics of the Orange Grotesquery, but it has become increasingly apparent that his mangled language simply kills.

The second attempt at Google Meet for our language classes was not an entire success.  The sound quality was variable, to say the least and the pictures confusing.  Having seen Zoom conferences of neatly aligned video feeds and exceptional audio, this experience was a little less than overwhelming.  I do not even think that I managed to get the basic information from our little gathering, but I will persevere and see what happens.

     Our Catalan group is about five or six on a good day, but I was the only one there and will have to relay imperfectly understood information in the hope of getting some sort of on line lesson up and running.  As far as I can tell, the only good thing coming out of the crisis is that we will not have any examinations; for which much thanks!  But it does call into question any certificate that we might be given at the end of the year!  What little Catalan I did have before the advent of Covid-19 has now altogether disappeared.  Every time I open my textbook, it is as thought I am starting from scratch.

     To justify our continued places in the virtual classes we have to do a certain number of ‘tasks’ and submit on line for assessment.  Having looked at the first one, I am even more confused than I was before the meeting, but no doubt, I will cobble something or other together and stagger on in the way that has become second nature to me when it comes to the study of languages!

We have just had a loudspeaker car come around the streets telling us that the normal municipal Friday collection of garden clippings and pine needles has been suspended until further notice.  You may not consider this much of a hardship, until you realize that the constant dropping of pine needles (in an area called after the pine trees) is a major problem.  This is not because of any unsightliness, but rather because of the threat that the accumulation of pine needles poses to the efficient working of our drainage system.  The pine needles block drains and cause floods unless they are cleared from gutters on a fairly regular basis.  Everything is interconnected and ignoring one part of the system will lead in a fairly short time to its collapse.  One wonders what other services have been dispensed with during this crisis and when the end results of this neglect will start showing itself.

     We are now two days away from the release of the Plague Kids into the streets on Sunday.  The rules (as far as anyone really knows them) say that a youngster can be taken out on a short walk accompanied by a single parent.  I simply do not believe that this is going to happen and we certainly do not have the number of police available to make sure that the rules are followed.  But, perhaps I am being cynical.

The sun is out and the sky is cloudless and all is well with the world.  At least, all is well with the world when it is concentrated on the third floor terrace, my private bit of the ‘outside’!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 39 – Thursday, 23rd APRIL

 

We seem to be trapped in a never-ending news cycle that endlessly repeats itself: statistics and excuses.

     It is fairly obvious that the present front bench is no longer truly concerned about how this crisis works out in terms of the human cost, but rather in who is going to be blamed for the way in which the crisis has been managed.  They can already see the various paragraphs of blame in the conclusions of the inevitable public inquiry and they are thinking, as always, only about their own survival and that of their discredited party. 

     If I was a member of the group of scientific experts that have had any contact with the Conservative politicians I would be engaging a lawyer now to keep a watching brief for the time that the Tory scum begin to put all the blame for their actions on the selective scientific advice that they will claim that they always followed.

     I think the case for corporate manslaughter charges against relevant ministers is almost overwhelming and I would willingly support a crowd-funded appeal for funds to prosecute the perpetrators of the fatal self-serving dithering incompetence that characterised the management of the crisis so far.

     The story of the PPE supplies get more murky by the second, with the Turkish connection being more akin to farce than competent procurement.  We have utilized the RAF to fly to Istanbul to get a partial cargo back!  The PRIVATE firm that our government has used to store the PPE stockpile has been sold to another firm during the crisis!  You couldn’t make this rubbish up, but is par for the course for a government that can pay millions to a ferry line with no boats.

     All this and Brexit too!  The bunch of third-rate incompetents still have the desire to take us out of the EU with no deal.  Weeping is not enough!

     The papers are taking a little time to consider who might be the scapegoat for the fatal disaster of crisis management.  The obvious candidate is Matt Hancock the man without fixed ethos, who swallowed his previous beliefs for the tempting offer of a seat in the sort of cabinet that he would have shunned previously.  But, what the hell, in the dregs of ability that is the present Conservative Party, he is some sort of star.

     With what has happened so far in the debacle of the crisis he has said things and made claims that cannot all be true.  He has therefore said the thing that was not.  And there is the question of the 100k tests that he has promised by the end of the month which are clearly impossible to deliver.  So that will be a resigning matter.

     With a fragmented cabinet in the absence of the Blond Buffoon and with the in fighting that must be going on, poor old Beckett must be wandering around with a selection of knives sticking into his back! 

     I have zero sympathy for him.

The talk of exit strategies is gaining ground, though we are not getting very much clarity about what they might be.

     Here in Spain I think that the weekend relaxation for the isolation of kids might be a way of the government seeing how well or how badly the population runs with this.  If it is a disaster and people take advantage then perhaps there will be a swift reversion to a stricter lockdown; if it goes well, perhaps it will be a start of a series of relaxations.

     The Scottish parliament is saying that some form of social distancing will be in force until the end of the year, at least for the at risk sections of the population.  We are not dealing with any definite information; there is no way that plans can be made for any events months ahead.  When is flying to and from Spain going to start again?  No idea.  And no idea about when we might expect to get an idea.

At least the sun shone for some time today.  I’m thankful for that.

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 38 – Wednesday, 22nd APRIL

An unconvincingly dry start to the day, where the most you can say about the weather is that it is not raining.  I will, however, take the opportunity to go for my walk in the dry, or dry-ish conditions, about which I will not complain – for fear the rains return!

     At times such as these one takes pleasure in small mercies, so I am truly thankful that I was able to complete my regulation walk unaccompanied by the lashing rain that has been such an obtrusive feature of the last three days.  And I had to wear a jacket, as the temperature was nowhere near the twenty-one degrees that my London cousin told me would be the norm where she was!  Still, I will bide my time and as we move nearer to the summer, I think that the balance of warmth will tip back in my favour!

Spain is going to ask for a two-week extension to the lockdown, putting its possible end some time in May.  Although the curve is flattening, there are still deaths and new cases of the virus and I am not sure that we have a convincing exit strategy.  It would be tragic indeed if the loosening of restrictions resulted in a virus spike towards the end of May.  I suppose the government is putting a great deal of hopeful expectation on the summer heat doing more efficiently what they have failed to do.  God help us all in the autumn!

     In Britain the controversy over the non-joining of the EU bulk buy initiative to get PPE shows no signs of calming down with the Civil Servant’s mea culpa letter being scrutinized stylistically in a way which would have done credit to the reading of the runes that used to go on in the gnomic pronouncements of the old USSR during the Cold War.  I do agree that paragraph three in the letter is one of Mandarin double-speak and the refutation of what was a clearly stated ‘fact’ that Brexit was the root cause of our non-participation is far less than convincing.

     It is depressing to realize that the government is more concerned about getting away with questionable statements, or maybe downright lies, in the short term in the hope that the inevitable inquiry in the longer term will be bad, but people will have moved one and memories are inevitably fickle and we will probably be back on the old territory of Brexit chaos to take people’s minds off what happened all those weeks ago.

     In the USA Trump is demonstrating on a daily basis that consequences are for little people and that lies, blatant and proven, are no hindrance to a narcissist’s grip on power if his base is indiscriminating enough.

     I feel very much the same about those people who voted for the present Conservative government and feel that the “Vote Conservative!” badge that I used to wear years ago is still more than valid, as around that injunction in smaller letters it had, “Young and stupid?  Old and selfish?”  Some things never change.

     Our ostensibly “socialist” government here in Spain, propped up with left wing parties’ support, is a little less than impressive and, apart from moving the corpse of the dictator Franco, it is difficult to point to any real achievements.  Admittedly, Trump has set the bar absurdly low for competence in crisis for a so-called democratic government, but his fatal dithering in the early days of the crisis has been mirrored to an extent in other governments in Europe.

     It remains to be seen how the releasing of the Plague Children into the community works out.  It has been said that kids can be unwitting carriers of Covid-19, so without testing allowing youngsters out from lockdown is something of a gamble, especially for the more senior parts of the community – in which category I firmly place my good self.  I can’t help thinking that there will be a whole age group re-watching Chitty-chitty-bang-bang and thinking that the figure of the ‘Child Catcher’ is one whose time has come round at last!

The story of the EU Bulk Buying Scandal has taken a further turn with the EU detailing when and how many times the UK had been informed about the whole thing.  One, or all of the front bench ministers is/are lying, as the ‘missed email farce’ is not really gaining any traction, while the 'Brexit Prejudice Pantomime' is seeming more and more like the truth.  So these unutterable bastards put the absurd foot-shooting of Brexit before actual people’s lives.  Who would have thought that Conservatives would have done something as despicable as that?  Well, I for one!

     This is obviously a resigning matter.  At a time of national crisis there might be some who might say that to change the people at the top would be counter productive.  Fair point.  But what if the people at the top are a bunch of vicious incompetents whose actions have killed people?  Surely getting rid of them is an act of self-preservation?  And don’t forget, the first to offer his too long delayed resignation should be the Blond Buffoon for his dereliction of duty in ostentatiously going out of his way to mix with Covid-19 carriers and thus become infected and deliberately taking a NHS bed that could have been used more profitably for those who, in spite of taking every precaution, caught the virus.  Vile man.  Vile government.

The Spanish government has now (again) come round to the point of view of the Catalan government over the question of the Plague Kids and how free they should be in the Great Breakout for this weekend.  The untramelled liberation of the Plague Kids has now been modified to bring it more like the Catalan suggestions that stipulated that kids under 12 would be allowed to accompany a parent for recreational short walks but not NOT going to places like supermarkets and places where real human beings could be infected.

     It remains to be seen just how the population interprets this relaxation, though I do not think that people are going to be too scrupulous and if they are not, then we are looking at more deaths later.

On the more positive, cultural side, I have, at last been able to print out a copy of The Coasts of Memory – though I think that there is more editing to be done before I am satisfied!

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 37 – Tuesday, 21st APRIL

 

It’s still raining.  It has been raining solidly for three days.  This is not what I paid up to join when I moved to Catalonia!  Where is the sun?

     Poor weather merely forces one to take even more notice of the news, and that of course drives one back to the weather once again.

     The scandal of the non-appearing PPE in Britain and the way that statistics are being thrown around concerning testing make me angry.  Politicians seem to equate hopes with hard statistics, as with the Turkish PPE that were talked about as supplying the NHS and they are still waiting.  In exactly the same way the Health Secretary was talking about the availability of tests for Covid-19, but the key question is how many tests have actually been administered?  From Beckett’s answers this evening, it is obvious that he is going to weasel out of resigning when he fails to get to the target for testing at the end of the month.

     While the supply of PPE rumbles on and with of course hospitals and care homes and health workers failing to be adequately supplied, the earlier part of that scandal has come back to haunt the government.

     Some time ago Britain was invited to join other EU countries in uniting forces to source supplies of PPE using the buying power of bulk purchase.  Though invited, Britain did not sign up.  Why?  According to the Conservatives, it was because they didn’t see the email.  According to a senior Civil Servant it was a political decision taken to placate the Brexit idiots.  According to the Conservatives, it was a single email that was missed.  According to other official is was a series of invitations that were not acted upon. 

     I have to say that I am inclined to agree with Philip Pullman who has written that he thinks the entire government front bench should resign at once, and if it can be shown that they ignored the invitation because of Brexit prejudice then they should be charged with manslaughter.  The Conservatives have issued a detailed refutation of the story in the Sunday Times that questioned their record and their motivations – but this story will haunt (as it should) the Government and the way that they played the early stages of the crisis.

Here in Spain and Catalonia there is almost terminal confusion about the government’s plans to loosen the lockdown to allow children to leave the house when accompanied by a parent.  The details of who, what, when, where, how often, how far, how old, how many and on and on are all bubbling up and there is no real authoritative governmental voice giving the sort of clarity that needs to be in place if there is not to be utter chaos when the policy comes into play.

     Like the masks that each citizen is entitled to.  On the first day of the distribution of the masks via the pharmacies the system crashed and so the television news carried stories of chaos rather than the extension of protection for us all!

     There are too many stories of chaos and too few of planned competence.

On the lighter side, I have received my parcel from Pound Shop.  It seemed to me that that could be a way of getting essential supplies through via the UK.  It all depends, of course, on how you define ‘essential’.

     In order to make the delivery charge worthwhile I had to spend about fifty euros and what I ended up with was a positive lucky bag of questionable goodies ranging from ‘chip shop curry granules’ via Cross and Blackwell baked beans to dark chocolate Toblerone. 

     In times of isolation, one needs one’s treats!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFLS - DAY 36 - Monday 20th April

It’s still raining!  This is the third day; I may as well be in the Britain – except I understand from resentful looking at the weather forecast for Cardiff that it has had the temerity to be fine in my native land!  What is the world coming to!

     I did manage to take my walk in a brief interlude of dryness between showers and then spent the rest of the day trying to edit my new chapbook, Coasts of Memory.

     Every time I read through the thing I find something else that I want to change.  I don’t mind the substantive editing where I am actually changing words, it’s the technical editing that always gets to me.

     I do have something approaching a final working draft, but I am nowhere near finished with the final product.

     The real problems have developed with the printing.  As I am trying to produce something in-house I am relying on one of the printers that we have to do my bidding.  This would be fairly straightforward, but I print out my chapbook poetry in A5 format, which means that I double side a page of A4 so that the final book is put together using multiples of 4 A5 pages to one double sided A4 sheet.

     The last time that I tried to print out a booklet I failed, but I failed with the expert help of technicians from Microsoft, Epson, Brother and Mac.  At one time I was getting on-line advice and help from three continents!  It was truly amazing how uselessly helpful true experts could be!  The end advice?  Buy another printer!  Honestly!

     The final resolution to the problem was to transfer all the files that had failed to my ever-trusty MacBook Air and print from that!  A solution that I am still using.  No matter that I have a state of the art printer in my study, it finds my up to date version of Word too difficult to work with!  Don’t ask!  I don’t understand either, but I do have a solution that works with a ‘vintage’ laptop and I am prepared to go with that.

     As I have added photographs to the chapbook, my current problem is that the printer refuses to print them in colour.  We have given up trying to get satisfactory solutions in the damp dark and I will wait for the bright morn to attack the recalcitrant printer.

     Toni has said that the reason the printer is not working is that I have bought a new Roberts Internet Radio to replace the white junk in the kitchen and the printer is sulking that I have a newer piece of gadgetry than  her!  Given my experience with insane pieces of electronics, I find that explanation for the non-colour printing of the document eminently sensible!

As you might be able to tell, I have embraced the problems with the printer as a way of thinking about something other than the Covid-19 crisis.  But alas, it has only partially worked.

     At the moment I am not convinced that any country in the world has actually got a convincing handle on how to deal with this situation.  I realize that we are in a dire situation: people are dying and are resenting social separation and while we are dealing with the medical crisis, the economic and social crises are gaining traction.  The story of the Great Depression is not an encouraging one, and neither is the long slog out of the Depression.  What is going to happen when the three months of government paying 80% of wages stops?  How far is this government prepared to go to ease the inevitable hardship that the complete dislocation of economic activity is going to continue to produce?

     The economy must be up and running as soon as possible, but at what cost?

Our Catalan class is stumbling towards some sort of new existence: I await developments with interest.

It looks as though it is going to be raining tomorrow as well!  I will have to lose myself in technical resolution.  So to speak.

     Tomorrow the colour many not be courtesy of the weather, thought I hope it will be courtesy of my printer!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 35 – Sunday, 19th APRIL

It’s raining. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     This is a more than depressing thought!