Eating together apart

 

 

Last night we were bought a meal by Toni’s sister to celebrate her Name Day: she was in Terrassa, and we in Castelldefels.  So, we ordered a meal from our Saturday regular restaurant and she paid for it via Bizum.

     How shaming is it to admit that before yesterday I had never heard of Bizum as a way of getting payments from one person to another without revealing your bank details?  As far as I am aware Bizum is located in Spain, or at least it is connected with Spanish banks – or is this just a further example of my electronic ignorance and Bizum is worldwide and it has just happened to pass me by?

     Whatever, that was used to pay for our meal, or at least to re-imburse us for our using hard cash to give to the motorcycle driver who delivered (the wrong) meal.

     It does seem strange this far into a lockdown, or restrictions, that a system that is administratively computer driven with clear print outs to attach to each bag of food to be delivered should be so faulty.  Correct labelling should be second nature at this stage of the struggle of a food supplier to stay afloat.  And the restaurant is foremost a delivery service rather than the other way around.  Still, wrong the meal was, but a quick telephone call and within a couple of minutes the bike rider reappeared and, speaking perfect English (years in London) gave us our ordered meal.

     If we are looking towards the summer of next year to get the vaccine down to our level of user, then ordering meals is likely to become something of a rule rather than exception.  I have noticed that restaurants are offering a take-out service now when they have never done it previously.

     My birthday is going to be another opportunity to find out how good our systems are as we were going to go to a restaurant for lunch – but all the restaurants are closed so take-away (or do it yourself) is the only option.  As my birthday is on a Saturday, there is not the chance of a menu del dia – but the restaurant that failed in the order yesterday, does do a reasonably priced (and usually tasty) version.  So, we will have to consider our options.  And wallets!

 

We have another White Goods Crisis.  I turned on the microwave and the lights went out.  Something is wrong.  But, talking of opportunity, it does give me yet another excuse to spend money!

But no.   

False alarm.  The fault was not in the microwave, but in the plug.  So that is one expense that I will not be incurring.

     In the old, unregenerate financial days, I have to admit that my reasoning would have gone along the “that saved expense ‘frees’ money to be spent on something else” – but I’m more grown up now and I merely feel a sense of relief and get on with my life.  Although I did buy (from the on-line shop) the catalogue to a new exhibition in El Prado that I thought was interesting.  Not quite the price of a microwave but still reassuringly expensive – and full colour illustrations too!

Why can't life be as it was?

 

It is amazing how far the quality of an experience can be changed by the omission of a cup of tea.

     I realize that the British obsession with our national hot beverage (not a leaf of which, with the exception of the botanical gardens in Kew, is grown in the country) is somewhat difficult for those not of a British persuasion to understand. 

     It is further complicated by our insistence that the milk be cold not boiling when added to the brew.  “Why,” my foreign friends ask, “would you do that?”  To ask such a question, almost by definition, defies an answer.  Where, one asks oneself, does one start when confronted by such levels of Philistinism?

     Anyway, at the end of my morning swim I am accustomed to make my way to the outside seating of the adjoining café and have a cup of tea and one made to my exacting standards of a mixture of Earl Gray and English Breakfast, and a brew that, when the milk is added the resultant colour is of a depth that my father would have found acceptable – though for him to be enthusiastic about a cup of tea it would have to be one of such strength that, “the tea spoon could stand up in it!”  My normal cup of tea does not aspire to such flavoursome heights, but it does emphatically not look like the usual anaemic liquids served opening masquerading as tea in this country.

     I swim a metric mile, that is sixty lengths of our 25m pool.  I go up and down, and up and down, accompanied only by the sound of my exhaled breath bubbling against my stoppered ears and seeing very little in the myopic blur in which I swim – having recently given up wearing contact lenses because they irritated me.  So, in the monotony of length swimming, the idea of a nice cup of tea waiting as a reward for early morning exertion is something to keep you going.

     But for the next fortnight, the café is closed except for ‘take-away’ and the idea of drinking my tea from a paper cup standing next to my bike is not something that appeals.  So, swim finished, dressed, straight out onto bike for the ride down to Port Ginesta and back. 

     It all seems a little earnest without the frivolity of tea, and it is, furthermore, while sipping my tea that I jot down ideas in my notebook.  I could, of course, jot down notes at any time, but the time just seems to melt away when you are breaking routine to get something done.  Notes are for post-swim tea drinking, not sitting in the comfort of an armchair later in the day.  And, after all, it’s only for a fortnight.

     And therein lies the rub.  I do not think that this closing of bars and restaurants is going to be sufficient to deal with the upsurge in number of infections.  I think that this partial lockdown is more a function of political cowardice and real fear over the financial consequences rather than a science-based solution.  It seems to me that this is just a softening-up of an already tired and fed up electorate before something more drastic will be forced to take its place.

     Although we are informed that there are over 170 trials of possible vaccines in operation and that by the end of the year there should be clear indications of likely candidate vaccines to roll out for the general population by early January, the more convincing voices has warned that the simple logistics of the immunization exercise make it unlikely that the PBI will get protection before the summer of 2012.  Given what we have packed into the past months of 2020, the summer of 2021 seems a hell of a long way away, and our political leadership has been shaky to put it at its mildest!

     Still, life goes on defiantly with people eagerly accepting ever changing versions of what New Normal might mean.

     One example of this might be the new way to celebrate distanced occasions.  Today is the Name Day of Toni’s sister and she has suggested that we have a distanced meal with her paying for a delivery of a menu del dia from one of our chosen restaurants here in Castelldefels because we are unable to go up to Terrassa and, anyway there would be more than six of us celebrating.  I will let you know how this works out, but it is only a development of on-line presents where, with Amazon Prime, it is cheaper to send something via Amazon than buy it yourself and send it yourself.

      Noticed on television last night that there were adverts for one of our largest Department Stores, El Corte Ingles, where they were saying that an on-line purchase could be delivered free of charge (?) within a couple of hours!  This is throwing down the gauntlet to Amazon and it will be interesting to see how it all works out. 

     For shops here in Castelldefels, unless they get themselves organized via the web to do deliveries they are going to go out of business.  The smaller shops will need help, perhaps via a sort of city version of a localized Amazon system, but unless something dramatic is done the whole commercial basis of city shopping is going to implode.

 

One of the lead items on the Catalan News was the fact that Wales has decided to impose a new/old stringent lockdown.  It may be the first in Western Europe to do so, but I do fear that it will not be the last.

     The tiered approach in England looks and sounds like an unsatisfactory compromise and the dump of documentation from SAGE telling the politicos that a short sharp shock was needed makes the shambolic behaviour of this totally discredited Conservative ‘government’ look even more mendacious that we already knew it to be.

     Johnson is quite prepared to sacrifice lives rather than face up to his political responsibilities.  He, and his cabinet of all the talentless, are despicable.  And once again I make the plea for someone, anyone, to bring a charge of Corporate Manslaughter against him and his Brexiteer accomplices as they continue their ‘systematic’ attacks on the people and institutions of the United Kingdom.

    

Life must go on!

 

My second day of unaccustomed lie-ins, and frankly, I’ve had enough.  The idea of getting up early is so engrained in me that any lingering in bed is effort not easement.  So, I will be up and about by 6.15 am tomorrow and be getting ready for my swim.

     Assuming that it is not raining, I will be using my bike to get to the pool.  Apart from immediately after the spill, the only bike ride I have had was this morning when I went out in bright sunshine to have an exploratory jaunt – not geographically (my route is set) but to see how my legs held out.

     I have already sort-of forgotten the pain of the original accident and I am more concentrated on the sharp reminders that come every time I get up and start walking, when the scab-mending skin on my knees stretches.

     It is easy to imagine while cycling that the tugging irritation of the scabs is going to result in cracks and on your return, you will have to mop up the rivulets of blood from opened wounds.  There was nothing like that, and so I am going to assume that the repairs to my epidermis are progressing well, and certainly well enough to take a little light swimming tomorrow morning.

     We shall see.

     Our Sunday lunch usually comes from the local pollo a last and today was no exception.  The only difference was that I went to get the food at midday because we reasoned, with the lack of food outlets open thanks to the new lockdown regulations, other people would be thinking of the quality take-away that is normally popular in less trying times.

     In the PC (Pre-Covid) days, you had to take a printed number and wait your turn.  That process has been dispensed with and now we have to queue, in masks with social distancing.  When I got there, very early for lunch, there were only three people ahead of me.  By the time I left the queue was considerably longer.  I had arrived at the tipping point of the queue and just made it before the masses descended!

     Given the fact that we have been in some sort of lockdown for eight or nine months we have to think about what used to be ‘normal’ when we go about our daily lives.  We do not expect to go out as much, to meet as many people to do the ordinary things that used to be part of a way of life.

     It is easy to live near the sea in what is a seaside town and see people doing what they have always done.  People walk and cycle and take the dog out.  Over the weekends, in spite of forceful recommendations, we know that we have many more than the locals walking along the paseo by the side of the beach and the sea.  We have the runners and the walkers and the families.  Many of them are local, I recognize them daily as I go on my bike ride along the paseo the length of Castelldefels, but many are strangers who have come (as they have always come) to one of the visitor friendly beach resorts near Barcelona.

     I am still shocked at the number of people who, walking along the paseo, don’t wear masks or wear them under their noses.  Some wear them on their elbows on hold them in a hand and some show no evidence of any mask at all.  It is at this point that I wonder about what these people think is happening around them, what do they think the word ‘pandemic’ means?  What do they think that their individual place in society demands?  As it is all I do is mutter “Covidiota!” under my breath and cycle on.

     Tomorrow, Monday, is the first day that the new restrictions will hit home, with parts of Castelldefels being fairly desolate places without the people and movement that come with thriving (even at 30% - 50% occupancy) of bars and restaurants.

     Tomorrow is the Name Day of Toni’s sister.  We would normally make the trip up to Terrassa for an evening meal and the distribution of presents.  Now everything has to be put on hold as I have no intention of moving outside my little Castelldefels bubble, and that disinclination has state approval.

     It does make me wonder about the sense of going to the opera.  On the one hand I do want to support the arts and t has been a long time since I was last in the Opera House in Barcelona – the last season was delayed and then cancelled.  My birthday is the date of the first opera of the new season.  But how can such a gathering be justified when bars and restaurants are closed?  How can the Liceu do better than small, more easily managed venues?  I have to admit that I am still in two minds about the safety of the forthcoming experience.

     We have been told that tickets for the performance will be sent to us via email; it is now six days away and I have had nothing.  I assume that Monday will be the day that we get final information about where we are sitting and our allotted seats have been changed in the interests of safety.  This is one experience that I am still debating taking.

 

Although my birthday celebrations have shrunk somewhat, I am already looking forward to greeting guests to the celebrations for the Completion of My Seventieth Year in October 2021.  DV.

Blood should be on the inside!

 

When the event in your life that you are looking forward to is the inauguration of a new container for your daily pills, then I might suggest that your standard for a new experience is Lockdown Limited. 

     We have become used to accepting the more quotidian in place of the exceptional, because what we used to take for granted: visiting new places, meeting friends and family, eating out – all have become more problematical with the see-sawing restrictions that we have had to live with for the last eight months or so.

     But my day was about to become more eventful, though not intentionally so. 

I had to get a new supply of my pills from our local pharmacist and I incorporated that chore as the finale in my morning exercise.

     Having completed my morning swim, I emerged into the morning sunshine to find that the outside seating area of the café part of the pool had been converted into one large ‘crime scene’, with the striped plastic tape making sure that all the tables and chairs were out of commission. 

     The café is now a take-away establishment only and, as one regular said, “What am I supposed to do?  Buy a take-away coffee and walk around the block drinking it, before I get back into my car?”

     So, bereft of my bocadillo and cup of tea (a mixture of Earl Grey and English Breakfast, they know how I like it) I set out on my bike ride down to Port Ginesta intending to call in to the pharmacy near our house on my return.

     It was cold.  Although I am still wearing T-shirt and shorts with the essential sandals, I am getting to the stage where long sleeved shirts and gloves are going to be a necessity.

     I arrived at a fairly deserted pharmacy that is part of a commercial development that includes garage, shops and restaurants – that, given the new lockdown regulations, were not generally open.

     I attempted to dismount from my bike, but after a 15km ride (well, it’s a lot for me!) and what with the cold, I was a little stiff and I unbalanced and brought the bike down on myself.

     As I have previously had occasion to explain my bike is fat wheeled and heavy, so trapped by gravity and a solid metal frame I hurtled to the ground!

     I was more shocked than in pain – though there was pain as well – and, as there were no people around I sprawled on the ground, trapped by the bike and weighed down by my backpack and felt truly helpless!

     I eventually disengaged myself and dragged by bloody way into the pharmacy, bleeding from both knees, my left elbow and, oddly, right foot.  The pharmacist noticed nothing and so, somewhat shocked with bloody track lines streaking down my legs, I collected my pills.  And cycled home – easier than wheeling the bike.

     My arrival back in the house was dramatic as the amount of blood on legs and feet made the wounds look much more dramatic than they were.  Dabbing away the excess revealed the cuts’ actual extent and emergency treatment with TCP commenced at once.

     The impressive bruise on the side of my knee has now deflated and I am left with seeping and pain.  In my usual way of dealing with infirmity of any sort, I took to my bed for a few hours to allow my body to do whatever it is that it does in times of stress.  And now it is time for another cup of tea and some light reading.

     I have decided to give the pool a miss for the weekend to allow the scabs to form and, anyway, I think my fellow swimmers might be a little disconcerted in the time of a pandemic to see me wandering around with open wounds!  Well, open-ish, and more like cuts to be absolutely truthful, but I am prepared to milk whatever sympathy I can get.

      Meanwhile I fully intend to be ‘palely loitering’ for the duration of the weekend and emerge revivified on Monday!

    

Plans? What plans?

 

It did not occur to me yesterday when I was thinking about the lockdown restrictions that are going to be imposed at midnight tonight for the next fifteen days that they comprised yet another knock to my birthday celebrations.

     With the ‘rule of six’ and the suggestions that different households not mix the situation for anyone actually making it to the restaurant to participate in my birthday meal was problematic. 

     As many of the people who coming from Britain, the fact that flights had been cancelled was something of a disincentive to start the journey, let alone the fact that Spain and Catalonia are not on the corridor of acceptable countries and that there would have been a period of compulsory quarantine on their return!

     So, the Plan D for my birthday had shrunk down to Toni and I having tapas at lunchtime in one of our trusted restaurants.  Which are now closed.  So, not only no friends and relatives but now, no venue! 

     At the moment the Opera is still on, but that is in nine days time and these days that is the rough equivalent of the temporal distance of the end of the last Ice Age and twentieth U-turn of the Blond Buffoon passing himself off as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom!

     All in all, these next few weeks are shaping up to be eventful.

 

Here we go again!

From tomorrow evening all bars and restaurants in Catalonia will be closed until the end of the month.  The restaurants will be able to operate on a take-out basis but it is going to look awfully like the lockdown of the hard days of early spring.

     Gyms (and presumably swimming pools) will be open but capacity is cut to 30% - whatever that means.  At the moment swimming in our pool is restricted to pre-booking and ten swimmers per hour, so I am assuming that will stay the same.

     Although we have some information of the wider details of the restrictions, we are still not clear about what rules apply to transport, meeting people, shopping etc etc etc.

     At the height of the lockdown here in Catalonia we were not allowed out of our houses except for essential journeys to get food and medicines.  Exercise outside your home was only for those with dogs who were allowed to take them outside by no further than 100 metres or so.  I don’t want to go over any more of the restrictions because, with their severity, we thought we had done all that was necessary to get the virus under control.  Wishful thinking!

     From what we understand so far, in that foggy confusion that has become a staple of governmental information during this pandemic, we are going to have to go through a sort of lockdown-lite with only memories of our previous experiences to keep us happy that the restrictions are not that bad!

     The one great difference this time round is the date.  We were in lockdown in the spring and now it is autumn.  Last night it rained and this morning was dark and damp.  Admittedly, it did get somewhat better during the day and we had some sunshine but the immediate forecast is not encouraging and there is something dire about being restricted in drizzle!

     As far as I can tell I will be able to continue my bike rides each morning and, as my route takes me along the side of the beach I am able to see the horizon – and that is good for the soul. 

     And I think over the next few months we are going to have a pressing need to find things that feed our souls and keep us safe.

Something needs to be done! Now!

 

In my consumer relations with various retail outlets there comes a time in our negotiations to try and right the wrongs that I feel have been done to me, when I feel the need to silently hand over a small printed card with the following message on it: “I am middle class, literate and tenacious.  Give up now while you still have some self respect, because you WILL NOT WIN.”

      I hasten to assure you that I haven’t actually handed over such a card, let alone printed one out, but it would have saved my shop-related opponents a great deal of time and effort.

     I remember watching one film about an evil insurance company (are there any other types?) where the default position to ANY claim made was, in the first instance, to refuse it.  As insurance companies have impressive financial resources and equally striking headed notepaper for their official missives to the grasping customers who have the unheard of audacity to expect the companies to do what they were paid to do, i.e. pay up when loss is experienced, there is an element of intimidation used against the clients.

     My father had dealings with one buildings’ insurance company when he claimed for storm damage to a chimney and part of the roof.  The work to repair the faulty structure had to be carried out on an emergency basis and my father was claiming after the fact.  He eventually received a letter informing him that his claim had been processed; a cheque was enclosed, and would be please sign and return the enclosed form.

     Needless to say the cheque came nowhere near the amount claimed and my father rejected the proffered cheque with contempt and started a length letter battle with the company that eventually resulted in a meeting in which my father suggested an independent assessment and arbitration.  He had no idea whether that sort of thing was covered under his policy but it seemed like a good idea and it was the sort of thing that he was teaching in his Liberal Studies lectures and classes (ah, there is a subject title from the brave new world of 60s education!) and it ought to exist.  The difference in the meeting was immediate and it was admitted that he did indeed have recourse to such an approach, but “we needn’t let it get to that sort of level” moderated the previously intransigent attitude of the blood sucking vampiric officials and a mutually satisfactory solution to the problem was soon arrived at.

     What lesson my father drew from his experience was not the quality of his letter writing, though he did regale Mum and me with some of the more lurid passages, but rather the underhand tactics of an unprincipled company.  As he reasoned it, how many people would turn down an actual signed cheque?  They would assume from the ‘official’ documentation accompanying it that the cheque was the end of the matter.  Dad used to talk about the situation of some OAP living alone with little or no support system in place feeling obliged to accept the cheque and being grateful for it!

     Having spurned the cheque it prompted my father into further and higher forms of letter writing, which, as I mentioned was, eventually successful in this particular circumstance and was generally successful whenever he put pen to paper in the interests of personal commercial justice!

     I channel my father when I have contretemps with suppliers who don’t live up to their PAID promises and I OPEN A FILE – dread words indeed!

     The foregoing is not a self-indulgent meandering, it has been prompted by my latest satisfactory outcome.

     I dropped my mobile phone and the glass back of the thing shattered – so much for toughened glass etc.  It shattered.  It still worked and I continued to use it, but this was not a situation that seemed to me to have long-term viability, so I tried to get it repaired.  This is a long story, a very long story, but I intend to cut to the chase.

     The point is not that the shop failed to get the phone repaired, but that they also managed to ‘brick’ it, and told me (eventually) that the phone was beyond economic repair and they would, very kindly, refund the money that I had paid them to replace the back of the phone!

     To be fair to the shop, the repairs were not carried out on the premises, but each shop in the chain sent them to a central technical station in a large Barcelona store.  I was given contradictory, confusing information about what actually had been or had not been done to my phone and the weeks dragged on.  From what they had said to me it seemed reasonable to assume that their attempts to repair had destroyed the phone.  I wanted another.

     The key questions remained (as the shop had my phone and it was not two minutes away from my house) did the thing charge and work.  Yes, I knew the back was smashed, but did it actually work as it did when I handed it in to be repaired?

   This (eventually) resulted in a brief email, which made me wonder if they were actually talking about my phone at all.  They told me it was working, that they had replaced the screen as I had asked (I hadn’t and they hadn’t) but they would give me a new phone.  Not, I might add, a replacement of my expensive phone, but a signally cheaper one, but by the same maker!  And they would pay back any money I had given for work that they had not done.

     I know that I could have held out for a duplicate, but I decided to cut my losses and retire with honour: full refund and spare phone.  Result.

     Because I have bought another phone.  The attempts to repair this phone started months ago, I knew it was going to be a long slog and so I listened to advice from One Who Knows and paid less than a quarter of what I paid for the phone with the smashed back and it does as much and more than the other one did.

     I also have the old phone.  I am not convinced that it is ‘beyond economic repair’ – I think that the shop simply gave up and bought me off.  As I have me new cheap phone and a newer cheaper one (courtesy of the store) I am sufficiently phoned-up to start a length campaign to get me old phone up and running.  At the moment it is charging (just checked 99% charged) and when it is ready I will see what it is still able to do.  If it appears to be serviceable then further steps will be taken to bring it back into full use.

     This particular file is not yet closed!  Not yet a while.

 

Fiesta?

 

 

Today is a National Holiday in Spain (including Catalonia) to celebrate ‘Spanishness’.  As you can easily imagine, this goes down like a cup of cold sick in Catalonia where any celebrations are, to put it mildly, muted.  We do, however, accept the holiday.

I thought that I was being on the ball by assuming early this morning that my swim would be delayed by an hour as, during fiestas the opening time of the centre is delayed.  I checked my ‘reservations’ on the app (all swims now have to be booked in advance thanks to the virus) and saw that the normal opening times were operational.

Not.

I arrived on my bike to a closed centre and a marked lack of eager car driver gym users queueing for the barrier to be raised.  I returned home and set about making use of the ‘gained’ time by settling down with a good cup of tea and completing the Guardian Quick Crossword.  First things first!  I did also unload the washing machine and sort the clothes; set Moppy off to do the mopping as she had virtually completed the hoovering by the time I returned from my abortive swim.  I’ve also unloaded the dishwasher and consequently feel smug that I have been a dutiful householder and done more than the majority of my sleeping fellow citizens around me.  I have also set my ‘morose’ setting to ‘full’ as I have read the headlines and leading articles in The Guardian and feel the full weight of 2020’s depression that has been the default state of the year!

If this year had been ‘normal’ by this stage I would now have been looking forward to the celebrations for United Nations Day on the 24^th of October when, coincidentally, I have a ‘significant’ birthday.  My grandiose plans for the day have all been scuttled of course, and the gathering of friends and relatives has now been consigned to the ‘completion’ of my significant year on United Nations Day 2021.  I can wait.

 

My menial task list now includes light hoovering on the third floor with the newly repaired and ‘relegated to the upper regions’ actual battery-operated Hoover (capital aitch) which should give some sense of cleanly order to the cluttered squalor in which I ‘work’. 

The Third Floor is really the equivalent of an attic and so it has a fair number of pieces of furniture and other impedimenta that simply don’t fit anywhere else and the jumble looks somewhat incongruous and hinders my access to the inevitable bookshelves with which I surround myself!

The saving grace of the third floor (apart from its existence) is the terrace which is spacious and south facing.  Toni’s ruthless cleaning of the kitchen has allowed a rather neat Perspex tray to resurface and I used that to make a pot of tea and take it upstairs for refreshment and to accompany tentative sunbathing.  The sun is out and, as long as there is no breeze at all, it is perfectly possible to ignore the month in the calendar and luxuriate in warm beams.

This is fine and dandy as far as it goes, but I have set myself a few more culturally improving tasks to complete today which require a little more than the ability to fill and empty a machine or push another one around a bit!

And lunch.  Lunch is going to be a culinary creation using whatever looks interesting in the freezer.  Some sort of fish casserole looks a possibility, so I’m off to create.