Sitting on the spacious terrace of the third floor,
warmed by the low summer sun of the early evening, drinking a cup of my brew of
English Breakfast and Earl Grey and with a view of three swimming pools in the
sort of open quadrangle formed by flats and houses – what could be more
pleasant?
The clue
to disharmony is in the “three swimming pools”, no, not the swimming pools, it’s
the conjunction of swimming pools and children that take away delight.
Apart
from lunchtime, where I had our communal pool to myself, and in which I was
able to do “open water swimming” as the only setting that my watch recognizes
the circles that I swim in a pool which is markedly smaller than the commercial
pool that I use for my morning swims, these pools attract kids in the same way
that lies attract Conservative cabinet ministers: they flock to them as if
their very lives depend on them.
This is
all, you might say, very normal. What
child is not attracted to glittering water and in your own backyard? Indeed, I welcome young people finding
delight in the chlorinated waters of their pools, it is the noise that
accompanies their delight that irritates.
Today,
for example, there seemed to be some sort of infernal timetable linking all
three pools: screaming kids in one pool has no sooner gone than they were
followed by shouting kids in another who augmented their lusty voices with
explosives, and when their pyrotechnic noisiness eventually diminished their
baton of cacophony was passed on to the third pool where very young kids
shrieked while belabouring the water with those polystyrene spaghetti floats
that make a penetrating slapping sound when applied to the pool’s surface.
As if this is all not enough, there has
been a resurgence of the moronically irritating game (sic) of Marco Polo. This ‘game’ consists of one person (if
children can be called such!) calling out ‘Marco!’ to which all the others reply
(you’ve guessed it!) ‘Polo!’ This can go
on for what seems like hours and I am convinced that any adult jury would
acquit any mature act of infanticide if the ‘game’ had been played for longer
than a couple of minutes.
I think
that it is important to have a ready crop of niggles such as the above during a
pandemic as they take your mind away from the more pressing problems of life
and death that our dear political leaders seem so incapable of managing.
Here
in Spain and Catalonia we have now officially come out of the State of
Emergency and from Monday we will be living the New Normal.
As I
now rarely go to the shops and my sphere of geographical wandering is generally
circumscribed by the shore to the south and my swimming pool to the north that
my observation of humanity is necessarily compressed. I see thousands of people along the beach as
I go on my daily bike rides, but it is difficult to extrapolate from people
sitting under parasols to the general population. Yes, I watch the new on TV, but when did that
ever give a balanced view of life!
Monday
will mean, for me, the opening up of the swimming pool. More people will be allowed to swim and, O
Joy!, we will be able to use the showers after we have completed our
lengths. You simply do not feel clean
after swimming in a water-treated communal pool. We will still have to wear masks when we are
not 2m distancing, but there will be more of us around. I think.
I wait to see what real differences there will be.
Today has been (generally) sunny and, as it is a
weekend the beaches have been packed. As
far as I can tell, people are sitting in their domestic bubbles and are trying
to leave some sort of space around themselves so that there is some physical
distancing.
The age
groups that are least likely to practice distancing are also those who have
been described as the most likely to be asymptomatic carriers – the age group
20-40, with the age group 20-30 being the most threatening to those who are
sheltering or are in the age group that is the most vulnerable to infection. Like mine!
Spain
has opened itself up for tourists – even for British ones, and that shows how
desperate they are to try and salvage something from the ravished holiday
period if they are prepared to take people from the European centre of viral
mismanagement, infection and death: the UK!
Benidorm is desperate for the Brits to come and drink themselves into insensibility,
and the bar owners and the hoteliers are prepared to risk death rather than have
empty premises.
And, to
be fair, who can blame them? Economic
activity must restart, the whole of society depends on people earning money, spending
money, and paying taxes. As with so many
things, it is a balancing of threats that will point to the way ahead.
The trouble
is that the British government, in spite of their oft repeated mantra of “We
are following the Science!” gives the impression of making up their responses
as they go along – mainly because that is exactly what they are doing. The number of rubber-burning screeching
U-turns show that they are basically clueless, and the ‘political’ and ‘populist’
are of supreme importance, and certainly of greater significance than the lip
service they pay to experts and science.
And morality!
Still,
we are where we are, and we have to deal with what we have rather than what
might have been if Johnson and his cabinet of third-raters had been even
marginally competent.
I am
still waiting and willing to make a donation to the fund that will enable
something like justice to take place so that Johnson and his cabinet are taken
to court to face a charge of corporate manslaughter for the way in which the
Covid-19 crisis has been mismanaged.
And
when is the Inquiry going to be established?
We need it now, so that the egregious mistakes that accompanied the primary
outbreak are not repeated in the almost inevitable second peak. Johnson and his crew have killed enough and
too many, they must not be allowed to career onwards without the information
from an exhaustive inquiry to guide them in the future.
The
future, let’s face it, is murky to say the least. Given how the world has changed in the last
12 weeks, it is difficult and frightening to think about what our world will be
like in another 12.
It is
difficult to be depressed in a sunny seaside town where most of the people are
having fun and relaxing. But that last
word is also dangerous, at a time like this true relaxation is dangerous and
possibly fatal. By all means enjoy the
sunshine; swim, walk, cycle, eat and play – but be aware, be safe.
‘Relaxation’
from 12 weeks ago is an historical memory, we have to redefine the word and the
world in terms of the New Normal so that it becomes ingrained, a way of
life. A way of Life!
