LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 55 – Saturday, 9th May

In one of those convoluted areas of jurisdiction that are more usual in Republican Party gerrymandering, part of Sitges curves over the hills outside the tunnels and engulfs the end of Castelldefels in the Port Ginesta area.  As this is a continuous part of Castelldefels most people actually forget that it is not part of our town.  The police, however, do know.  And this morning they were on the Paseo looking pained as all we people from Castelldefels were walking (or cycling) along the road.  Toni told me later (as he had gone for a walk in the opposite direction) that Gavá was also similarly policed and ‘isolated’.

     This is not something that happens on a regular daily basis and I think that it is confined to weekends when the ‘danger’ of outsiders infringing local boundaries is at its highest.  To be fair; it’s a fair cop.  We are, after all, supposed to be confined to our localities – however artificial they actually are.

     The news from the UK is not good in this area where six weeks of lockdown are facing what could be a sunny Bank Holiday weekend with police in London saying that they are losing the battle of the parks with people flocking to them to sunbathe and drink, and gather in groups not segregated by physical distancing.  As the weather here is not particularly sunny it will be interesting to see how many people are out and about this evening at 8pm when my age group is allowed to exercise.

On a more festive note, today is Toni’s birthday and I filmed him opening his presents (at a few minutes past midnight last night!) and put it online in the Family site so they could see the presents that they had only seen in photographs in Amazon!  It is a strange time with customs adapting to new circumstances.

     I hope that the chocolate cream birthday cake that I hid in the fridge has not yet been discovered so that it can make a suitable impression when it makes its flaming way into the living room!

     And it was delicious!

My evening bike ride was taken a little later than usual, in the dark rather than the twilight and it was, ironically, revealing.  Setting aside for a moment, my pet peeve of cyclists without lights, the most glaring element I observed was the grouping of teenagers in ‘bike gangs’.  Obviously they have their mobile phones to arrange the coordination of their exercise times and that gives them the opportunity to meet up.  As many of them use their bikes as seats there is a sort of built-in physical distancing, but they are more gang than individuals and there is little sense of viral threat.  Perhaps it is futile to expect teenagers to be constantly on their guard against a virus that they think will not single them out, but they must be made aware that they could easily be asymptomatic and therefore they could be a real threat to their parents and especially their grandparents.

     Perhaps I was looking for evidence of shirking the rules and therefore found it, but I do sense a feeling of relaxation that I think will be even stronger on Monday after a weekend of seeing television pictures of people exercising their ‘freedoms’.  It is something that concerns me.

     As it should!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 54 – Friday, 8th May

Where does one start? 

     It almost takes me back to what I realize now, were the morally halcyon days of the end of Thirteen Years of Tory Misrule when scandal followed scandal culminating in the heady sexuality (which I must admit I hardly appreciated at my age then) of the Profumo Scandal.  I can still recite the names of the main characters in that sordid grande affaire with salacious relish!  Of course the most notable thing about that particular scandal was that Profumo actually resigned.  A politician resigning!  Ah, those were the days.

     So we come to the present regime in the UK, another Tory regime with a decade of misrule behind it and a bewildering array of ‘resignable’ mistakes connected to the Covid crisis.

     The papers of SAGE have been released to the press but with redacted sections to protect the government’s narrative of ‘following the science’ as if there was a concept of Science that was absolute and beyond political mediation.  Were I a scientist advising the government, this government, I would be very, very concerned because it is fairly obvious that the Tory party is lining up the Science (with a capital ‘S’) to be the fall guy in the inevitable public inquiry.

     Let us continue with the catalogue of contempt.  The care homes situation does not seem to be getting any better.  On the anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, it is a cruel irony that the care homes in Europe now appear to have distressing overtones of extermination camps, in spite of the sterling service of care staff who are woefully and disgustingly underpaid, understaffed and under equipped.  How many elderly people have to die before this discredited government accepts its blame and works to ameliorate the situation?

     The continuing numerical farce of the testing seems to be unending and the increasingly discredited Beckett has not, again, accepted that he has failed.  And Beckett is one of the less noxious members of this government, especially when you consider that the organizing brain is the loathsome Cummings, the Marie Antoinette/L’eminence gris de nos jours but with a more vicious take on Marie’s airy dismissal, more of a “Let them die” sort of vibe rather than an invitation to appreciate brioche!

     The numbers of those infected continues to grow and the daily death count is a constant accusation.  One that cannot be avoided by using the amours of a randy professor to try and subvert the news on the day that the death rate became the largest in Europe.

     The comedy of errors that is the ordering and non-delivery and eventual delivery and delay and quality check and rejection and farce and death is something that is so absurd that it couldn’t be made up!

     The latest idiocy can be placed fairly firmly at the feet of the Blond Buffoon who ignoring parliament, decided to announce the easing of some of the lockdown measures.  Unfortunately the right-wing press has hailed the announcement as something of liberation from the tyranny of lockdown deprivation and has geared up the population to expect dramatic ‘freedom’ when the numbers of deaths and infections does not justify anything other than the mildest of loosening.  This weekend is going to be fine and it has a Bank Holiday, so people are going to expect sunbathing, beach visiting and lazing about in parks.  The expectation of more than is likely to be on offer is going to produce tensions that can have fatal consequences.

     Here in Catalonia and Castelldefels, the mere suggestion that there are going to be phases of loosening of lockdown has been enough to inflate expectations and suggest that it might be time to bring on the new normality.

     From my observation the young have comprehensively decided that they are immune to the virus and they are certainly acting as if the virus is only for the old.  I think that the transition from lockdown to anything that is not lockdown is going to be very difficult to bring off, when the younger part of the population thinks it is immune and the other feel that they have done more than enough already and are ready for a little (or a lot) of relaxation.

     It is going to be a rough few days - with worse to follow.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 53 – Thursday, 7th May

My bike ride today was truncated by the police.  Not violently, you understand, but rather by an obstinately parked police car and a flick of a police finger.  The way to Port Ginesta at the far end of Castelldefels was blocked off and I had to return the way that I had come.  To compensate for the distance lost, I decided to add the ‘evening cycle’ of going to Gavá before I came home, but that too was blocked off.  Those in Castelldefels had to stay in Castelldefels.  The Port Ginesta end of Castelldefels is technically in Sitges and Gavá isn’t Castelldefels, in spite of the fact that both places flow naturally into the city.

     In the evening, both places appeared to be open again, so the blocking off in the morning was difficult to understand.  But that goes for so much of the civic life of this place!

     I must admit that the inability to go to either Port Ginesta or Gavá did actually make me feel a little trapped.  The feeling was more mental than practical as the freedom of the Paseo is more than enough for reasonable exercise, yet the simple prohibition made the reasonable feel a little cramped.

As Toni was going for a walk in the evening I ‘joined’ him after the eight o’clock clap, even though he was walking and I was on my bike.  I therefore postponed my watching of the NT Live production of Antony and Cleopatra, but I look forward to seeing that tomorrow evening, when I will need something to recover from our on-line Catalan lesson.

     The practical problems related to this class are legion.  There is the wonkiness of the system that we are using to create the class in the first place, which is added to the stubborn resistance of my computer to let me use the microphone, which, for a language lesson is a bit of a bummer.  Then there is the work that we are supposed to be doing.  The tasks are supposed to be on line and when completed on line they will be marked on line.  That isn’t working.  The one task that I found and did do I had to do off line because the document that I was supposed to use to write out my responses would not allow me to edit it.  I wrote out my work and emailed it to the teacher – and that is the last that I have heard of it!

     I am sure that these are all teething problems, but given the immanence of the end of term, we are not going to have many more attempts at getting it right.  My offering is to change the computer and the network to try and get a more practical link in the on line lesson.  I live, as ever, in hope.

Today has been one of those inexplicably tiring days.  Although my bike ride has a respectable distance to it, the bike is electric and I do welcome some level of assistance when I am peddling.  It is still exercise, but I realize just how much ‘assistance’ I am getting when, from time to time, I set the level to zero and therefore use the bike as an ordinary form of un-augmented transport: not a pleasant experience, and one that would not get me out of bed before eight in the morning if that was the norm!

     So, I cannot really blame my bike for my tiredness, nor my shortish walk around the pool – so I will blame the weight of worry about the way that life is being organized at the moment for taking away my natural vitality.

   The latest ‘worry’ is that the Spanish government has decided that the present hours that the Plague Kids are allowed to mix with human beings is inappropriate as the little virus ridden carriers are out in the midday sun and it is obviously far too hot for the little dears.  I would have thought that the heat would at least limit their viral load, but no, the hours will be readjusted and we will have to concede time to them.

     As I now regard every child below the age of 25 (sic) as a potential personal death threat, my suggestion is that we find some island somewhere and put them all on that until the crisis is over but, as usual, such reasoned ways forward are rejected by people who never see the wider picture.

     And talking of the crisis being over, there is a disturbing number of people whose public behaviour seems to indicate that as far as they are concerned, the crisis is a thing of the past.  True, there are people who ostentatiously keep the requisite distance apart, but they are in the minority in my observation, and the young cling to their immortality without responsibility and have rejected all PPE and physical distancing suggestions and are embracing the approaching summer with all the ebullience of the old normality.

     Hey ho!  So it goes!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 52 – Wednesday, 6th May

I am not, it must be said, a fan of the Blond Buffoon, so I probably did not come to the viewing of PMQs with an open heart and a forgiving attitude.  Be that as it may, I have to say that I have rarely seen a more cringe worthy performance than that of our Prime Minister (sic.) answering questions from the Leader of the Opposition.

     Johnson’s bumbling waffle was an embarrassment, and it was all the more telling because he was bereft of the usual Tory baying to cover up his lazy emptiness.  He is an indolent man, and his shallowness was on pitiful display in this exhibition of his fatuousness.  Starmer destroyed him with the sort of questions to which there is no answer, unless the proven liar changes the habits of a wasted lifetime and actually finds a modicum of veracity and admits guilt for the catastrophe of the management of the Covid crisis.

     It seems almost redundant to say that the number of deaths in the UK is now over 30,000.  30,000 lost lives.  30,000 people dead.  And we are told that we should not jump to international comparisons, even though the government itself produces those comparisons.  We  now have more deaths from Covid-19 than Italy.  We are paramount in Europe with the number of deaths.  Are we supposed to forget that we were told that “deaths under 20k would be a good result”, so we must assume that 30k deaths is a disgusting catastrophe.

     One can go on listing the disasters that this government has ‘managed’: the non-provision of PPE; the whole question of Care Homes; the provision, number, and quality of tests; the lies we have been told; the lack of transparency; the lack of an exit strategy; the slowness of the initial response; the criminal irresponsibility of Johnson in failing to take distancing seriously; the provision of masks for the general population and on, and on.

     It is obvious that we need an independent inquiry now so that this disaster is not repeated.  The process needs to be started immediately and the evidence needs to be gathered as a matter of urgency.  Thirty thousand people have died and it is inevitable that even more will follow them if we do not learn the lessons that can prevent the growth of fatalities.

     The UK is being reported in foreign newspapers with a mixture of astonishment and sorrow and Johnson is regarded as the wrong leader in the wrong place at the wrong time – a watered down version of Trump – and with a cabinet of inadequates: a perfect storm of negatives at the time when the crisis demands the very best.

I continue to go for my bike rides and am joined each time by a whole variety of people who have broken out bikes to take part in our daily Paseo.  There is a certain determination in the exercise that we are taking and few people look as though they are enjoying the experience!

     I miss my daily swim – it gives a shape to my day and it starts it ‘properly’ as I swim at 7 am, then my cup of tea and making notes.  It’s a good start.  I could start my bike ride at 6 am, as our time slot is from 6 to 10, but I am disinclined to do that.  There are limits to my desire to exercise!

Our Catalan lessons have developed, in so far as there is another lesson this Friday in the morning and via Google Meet.  I have not found this system to be one that I get on with, but I am going to try a change of computer and hope for the best for the next attempt!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 51 – Tuesday, 5th May

All my life (except for one brief flirtation with the showy radical charms of The Independent) I have been a Guardian reader.  I know that, in many ways, I am a typical Guardian aficionado: wishy-washy-left-wingy-middle-classy what have you.  Every morning I do the Quick Crossword and read (nowadays) virtually everything.

     And that is the problem.

     After twenty minutes of headlines and leading articles I have virtually lost the will to live.  The unrelentingly negative news about the duplicity and mendacity of our political leaders; the ravages of Covid-19 and its increasing devastation in the Developing World; Brexit; Trump; the Spanish and Catalan economies and the continuing disaster of the lockdown; the building work next door; the closure of the Liceu; the continuation of my Catalan lessons.  Everything works together to depress.

     But, as one astute friends remarked, “You are almost enjoying this, aren’t you?”  And, yes, apart from the inability to go for my daily swim, the forcing myself on my own resources is not something that I dislike!  Obviously the reasons for the change in life style are appalling and I am horrified by the loss of life and the descent into poverty for so many in the world as their life line of occupation is modified or taken away – but I am able to count my blessings, and my personal circumstances are so much better than many.

     What is difficult is balancing my present ‘fortunate’ position with the more than negative circumstances of so many others.  Reducing myself to misery reading about the privations of others, mixed with sharp guilt because I am not ‘suffering’ like so many, is essentially an arid waste of limited joie de vivre.

Why as the Health Secretary not resigned?  Touchy little Matt who was offended by the ‘tone’ of a shadow spokesperson’s pertinent question about his and his government’s shortcomings obviously lied about achieving 100k tests by laughably inflating the testing figures and for the last three days the total has fallen below his self-set target.  If he had an ounce of decency he would go; but one has to remember that he joined Johnson’s government in spite of what he had said previously, so he has no decency.

     What I find most objectionable is that ministers behave as though they are playing a game of ‘deflect the blame’, using words to hide the yawning gaps in health care provision and what they do not seem to understand is that people, actual, real people, are dying because of their actions, inactions and wordiness.

     Every day brings new scandals, new statistics, new depths to which the government effortlessly sinks.

I went out for a bike ride this evening in ‘our’ time slot and noticed only one obviously illegal Plague Kid out and about, together with a number of marginal looking ‘kids’ who if they are supposed to be 14 plus to be in our group were marginal to say the least.

     I enjoy my jaunt up to the end of the coastal road in Gavá, because I always end up feeling pleasantly, resentfully irritated by the entirely predictable poor behaviour of pedestrians and their encroachment on our cycling lanes.  These lanes are clearly marked with white lines and little logos of bikes and pedestrians should stay out.  But they don’t.

     The really irritating ones are those that walk deliberately on the outside white line of our double lanes and look pained when you don’t deviate from your painted path and force them (usually) to give way.

     People walk backwards into the lanes, allow their dogs to meander on absurdly long leads, let kids go on toy cycles and scooters, have conversations in the middle of the lanes and on and on.

     The worst offenders are of course runners.  It is a bike lane and not a runner’s lane – but runners seem to believe that they are in a different moral universe to the rest of us.

     In the interests of fairness and truth, I have to admit that some cyclists are just as obnoxious, showing little to no concern for pedestrians and ostentatiously riding in the pedestrian part of the road.  Alas!  If we were all judged by our total behaviour, who would ‘scape whipping!

     But I find that, factoring in the irritation, it is an excellent and not too long ride with plenty to see and, as I pride myself on being a considerate cyclist, I end up slightly tired with a warm sense of superiority at the end of my journey.  And, and this is the key difference between myself and most of the other bike riders, I use my lights!

     Sigh!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 50 – Monday, 4th May

The entirely predictable scandal of the British tests continues.  It now appears that the tests sent out by post (and claimed as part of the 100k total in spite of not being taken on the day) did not have return envelopes with them, and when somebody asked if they could be sent by the testee was told that it should be junked and another test would be sent.  This is in addition to the general disbelief in the figures themselves, and the revelation that the number of tests yesterday was nowhere near the 100k figure.

     Add to this the continuing scandals of the deaths and lack of testing and PPE in care homes and you have something of a perfect storm of disgust that should be levelled at the government for their continuing mismanagement of the crisis.

     There must surely come a time when the inexplicable continuing belief in Johnson and his government as being in any way competent must start touching reality.  Surely?

     The numbers of deaths continue to grow and we seem to be heading inexorably for a figure of over 30k – and I only hope that in the months to come I don’t look back on that figure and smile wistfully at my naivety in believing we could keep it so low.

In Catalonia we have reached another level of lockdown release with the opening of smaller shops, newsagents and the like.  Although this is obviously welcome, the testing is not in place to make this strategy anything other than very, very risky.

     On my early morning bike ride today there were more people around that pre-crisis, but fewer than on the first day of release on Saturday.  There seem to be more groups of people around and casual social interaction seems to be getting back to ‘normal’ when the real situation is anything but normal.

     To be fair, I did see (mainly older) people in masks, but generally speaking people are not keeping the regulation distance apart, and I think that the opening of shops will exacerbate this tendency.

     Our local pharmacy, perhaps unsurprisingly, takes separation seriously and only allows two people in the shop at the same time, uses Perspex shields on the counters, has hand sanitizer at the entrance, and has assistants wearing masks at all times.  The local chicken rotisserie has a rope keeping the distance of customers from servers, and when one man pushed in he was roundly admonished by the owner, as was the assistant who had offered to serve him!  If that level of separation is maintained by other shopkeepers then this part of the strategy might just work.  However, my observation, limited though it necessarily is, would indicate that people are too quick to think invisibility of the virus and fine weather are enough to ignore the consequences of old style conviviality.

     Disturbingly, I have just been told that the progress of the virus in Madrid has taken a turn for the worse and the some are wondering if the government will re-impose some of the restriction that have so recently been taken down a level or so.  If these stories are true then it fits in with the low expectations of how people behave on the ‘give them an inch and they take a mile’ sort of analysis of human character!  I will wait and see the evidence for this before I put on my sadly smug face and shake my head sorrowfully from side to side.

My disgust with the way that the Conservative government of Johnson and his deadbeat cabinet are handling the Covid-10 crisis continues.  With the on-going controversy of the initial approach to the virus and the discredited ‘herd immunity’ or according, to Cummings, “Just let them die!” to the new scandals of the way in which Care Homes have been neglected, taking in the absurdity of the way of counting in the test numbers, there is nothing (and don’t forget Brexit) in this government’s approach to give you anything approaching optimism for the future.

     Welcome to modern Britain!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 49 – Sunday, 3rd May

 

The enthusiasm for the outdoors early in the morning! 

     Well, the general enthusiasm had markedly diminished by the time I got onto the Paseo at just after 7 am!  The First Day zest had cooled as I rode down a sparsely populated sea front.  Don’t get me wrong, there were more people there than usual (I mean the usual of more than six weeks ago) but given the masses who were relishing their new found freedom yesterday, their staying power was something of a squib!

     I did my stint from the house to Port Ginesta beach that is at the far end of the gentle arc of the bay that ends with the train tunnels that eventually lead to Sitges.  This journey I saw nobody whom I knew and my trip was personally uneventful.

     What was interesting was the positioning of the police at the roundabout at the end of the Marina, guarding the road that leads into the beach part of Castelldefels.  This was obviously there as a deterrent to any ‘visitors’ to the beach, as we all should be exercising near or rather ‘near’ our homes.  The positioning of the police links up with what Toni told me yesterday when he noticed the police stationed on the part of the beach road that links Castelldefels with Gavà.  Toni also mentioned that the end of his walk was getting closer to the cut off time for our age group of 10 am, and the police are not hesitant in dishing out fines to those who break the regulations.

     I am just over five months away from being cast into another age group when my times for exercise will differ from those of Toni – but who really has the slightest inkling of what will really happen in those countries which have suffered (and go on suffering) the most from the virus in five long months.  Given the speed of the news cycle nowadays we may not be able to recognize the world as we knew it as having any real relationship with the way that we will be living then!

     The incubation period for the virus is two weeks or thereabouts, so we should be checking the infection statistics on May 16^th to see if the relaxation has had any numerical results.  I hope to god not, but given the way that people are responding to the fine weather and the new freedom, I fear the worst.

At the moment Toni’s family is having a joint ‘meal’ via the Internet to celebrate Mother’s Day.  Unfortunately Toni’s mum does not know how to join the videoconference and so she is present in thought only!  Though now she is being contacted by phone in the hope that it can be converted into some sort of joint effort.  I do not hold out any lively hopes.

     I suppose that what we are stuttering out way through at the moment could become the fabulous New Normal that everyone is talking about and no one knows how to make real practical sense of it.  If physical distancing continues for the foreseeable future and travel between towns is banned, then the videoconference is the only way of giving a form of immediacy with sound and vision.  Like so much else, what is now new and unusual will become the everyday.  Mobile phones and smart phones are a case in point, who now does not own one and, more importantly, know how to operate it at a level of sophistication that would shock the selves of just five years ago!

     If this does become more usual then I am sure that there will be something like a curated service that will guarantee HD quality sound and picture and give a firm electronic link – and there will be plenty of people who would be prepared to pay for something a few shades of sharpness better than that you get for grainy nothing!

After the 8pm clap for health workers I made my second bike ride of the day along the beach path to Gavà, and it was fairly full.  I only saw two illegal kids who should have been indoors at the time that I was there, but it was the other people who made me wonder about how this is going to turn out.  There was little evidence of physical distancing and, when I returned I went in the opposite direction on the Paseo towards Port Ginesta, there was even less.  As far as I could see, the people on the Paseo looked and behaved as if it was a normal Sunday evening.  And that is worrying!

My collection of poetry, Coasts of Memory, continues to frustrate.  I am satisfied with the general editing; it is more the practical production of a printed version that is causing me heartache!  The Brother printer that I have was bought specifically for its ability to print booklets.  I make problems for myself by adding colour photographs to the mix that have vast implications for the memory.  Even with cutting the size of the file it is too unwieldy to sent via email.  I therefore took the decision to reformat the colour photographs and ‘transform’ them into artistic black and white productions. 

     There were yet more printing difficulties and the photos had to be redone.  Again.  But, at last, I managed to get something printed with which I am almost satisfied.  I think that I will have to see if I can get a professional to give me a quotation for the printing of the chapbook in colour.  Otherwise, the black and white will have to do!  And I have to admit that the final product does look quite elegant.

     Now, on with my plan to distribute it via email and ask for a donation to the NHS charity of a country of choice!  Onward and upward!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 48 – Saturday, 2nd May

Two good, long bike rides!  By me!  After six weeks this is something to write about!  Literally!

     Enough with the exclamation marks.  It was not as liberating as I thought it would be.  I got up at 7.00am and was out of the house in double quick time, adopting the normal swimming pool technique of brushing teeth, quick wash and shower after the ride.

     There were far more people around than normal.  There were the usual unhappy looking runners of all ages; couples taking a walk; dog walkers; people walking on the beach; surfers and we cyclists.  It will be interesting to see if the same numbers of people are around tomorrow after the delight of pseudo-freedom has worn off and the unaccustomed aches in parts of the body that have been ‘resting’ for the last number of weeks are a little more real!

     We have seen pictures of television where the numbers of people who came out onto the streets made physical distancing very difficult, and my perception is that people are disinclined to continue the restrictions.  This does not bode well.

     As an example, as I am typing, a group of (noisy) people have made a little party around and in the communal pool.  The composition of the group includes parents, children and rat dogs – with dogs being specifically banned from the pool area.  In some ways I suppose it is good that they are able to act as though there was no Covid-19 crisis at all.  Good luck to them, one might say.  But the one thing that has demonstrated itself with crystal clarity is that the virus does not fall back in baffled frustration when confronted with people who do not take infection seriously, it feeds on such irresponsibility and thrives and does not restrict itself.  And kills.  Over a third of those who are ill enough with the virus to go to hospital do not leave it alive.  That puts silly sociability into proportion!

     Castelldefels is a seaside town, where walking the Paseo is an essential part of living!  As we move into the clear summer months and more and more people (quite understandably) want to be by the sea, and it is going to be more and more difficult to sustain anything approaching the requisite distancing that shows the necessary respect to reject the fatality of slackness.  I think that previous sentences is stupidly complex and involved, but I’m too lazy to strike it out.  People are going to become more and more easy going, as the weather gets hotter.  And we are not going to take things seriously until there is another spike in the virus deaths and then it will be too late.  For some.

     Perhaps people are seriously thinking in percentages and thinking that it is probable if they are young(ish) and healthy(ish) that in percentage terms that they are likely to survive.  And they are, of course, likely to be right.  Unless they are wrong.

     But I did go out for a ride.  I should look on the positive side, and go out for another one when our next authorized period starts.  I can go out just after the daily 8pm clap for the health and essential workers.

In my third ride of the day on my bike I actually saw two people whom I knew, but didn’t stop to talk.  There were still lots of people about (and three illegal kids – NOT their time to be out) with many groups and people talking and interacting with an ease that suggests that they consider that the crisis is just about over.  Which it most assuredly is not.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 47 – Friday, 1st May

JOHNSON SHOULD OFFER AN APOLOGY FOR HIS GOVERNMENT’S HANDLING OF THE COVID-19 CRISIS AND RESIGN.

At least then he will be able to spend more time with his various families – though his children from his last divorced wife apparently fully supported their mother in the divorce proceedings, so perhaps not the warmest of greetings from them.  But, who knows, if he actually spent time with them, quality time, perhaps things would be different?

Here in Spain and Catalonia, people continue to die and continue to be infected with the virus, but all of us are looking forward with varying degrees of confidence and optimism to the next stage in the loosening of the restrictions.

     Tomorrow from 6 -10 am and 8 – 11 pm my age group is allowed out for our first walks in the open streets for the last six weeks and more.  In my case I am looking forward to my first bike ride!  Before the sun goes down, I must make sure that I dust off the pine pollen that now encrusts the bike after its weeks of inactivity, and oil the mechanical bits too – and power up the battery.

     It is yet another level of irony that the throttle that I have ordered and paid for from Mate has still not arrived.  More than a year after it was paid for!  Bugger the lot of them.

Well, it appears that Matt Hancock has reached the 100k figure of tests for the virus, in spite of the unlikely jumps in numbers that were necessary to make that happen.

     It may appear like sour grapes on my part that I find the figures difficult to believe, especially as there have been claims of multiple testing of individuals counted and tests counted that have been sent through the post or merely ordered.  I would like to see an independent audit of the figures, but at the same time what effect would there be?  It is obvious that the Government is much more concerned with getting the narrative for the virus in their favour than anything to do with truth – whatever the Conservative government understands that word to mean.

     Numbers of people tested is not the main point – who, when, where are all just as important.  The total set by Beckett was probably missed, but the total was plucked out of thin air, was not “led by science” and acts more as am illustrative function of a immoral bunch of third-rate politicians than as any thing related to the reality of the crisis itself.

     Undoing the lockdown without mass testing in place is almost meaningless.  Unless contacts are followed up and tested we are going into a sort of fatal free for all.  I fundamentally do not trust the politicians who have lied so extensively and comprehensively from the disaster of the Brexit campaign through the general election and in the Covid-10 crisis.  They have lost any faith that I might have had in their moral position.

     The Cabinet of Brexit fanatics can be summed up by their repeating what they regard as their saving mantra for this crisis: “We were only following the science!”  Any comparison to a saying from the mid 1940s is entirely intentional!  And Professor Joad’s continuingly useful comment, “It all depends on what you mean by . . .” is particularly useful here, when you consider what particular science the government is actually using.  They act as though there is a single scientific ‘truth’ whereas there are always conflicting opinions and a choice has to be made and the politicians must take responsibility for what they choose.

     It is fairly obvious that the government is hoping to deflect some of the justified condemnation on to the scientific advisors when the independent inquiry starts.

Let’s see how early I manage to get up to take my bike ride.  Please let it be fine!

JOHNSON SHOULD RESIGN NOW!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 46 – Thursday, 30th APRIL

The fact that I refer to 9.00am, when the builders reforming next door begin unlocking the gates to get to the next stage of their noisy work, as “bright and early” is a sign of how things have changed.  Pre-Covid my normal time of rising was 6.30am so that I could get to the swimming pool by the time that it opened at 7.00am!  What different days those now seem.

     The work on the house next door has meant that we have been subjected to almost constant noise almost every day of the week for months, literally months!  The people re-doing the house have treated the house as a normal building site rather than as one house joined to a terrace of others where ever hammer blow is seamlessly transferred to all the other dwellings.

     They have now started on the replacement of the garden fences with a breezeblock wall.  We have had to be nimble on our feet to go and question (wearing our masks) where exactly they think the borderline between our houses lies.  Of such stuff is the most acrimonious argument made!  To be realistic, given how tatty the previous fences were, virtually any replacement is bound to be a positive, but still one’s land is one’s own – even if the property is rented!

     The only positive aspect of this resurgence in building activity by our neighbours’ workers is that the waste sacks that have been lying in the car parking spaces opposite our houses for the last six weeks are, at last, being taken away – thought I wonder if they will take all four of them or leave a couple there just to mark out the territory as it were!

     As new neighbours, one has to say that they have taken no trouble whatsoever to keep the families that live on either side of them appraised of what they are going to do and the inconvenience that results from their building activities.  Not a good start to the prospects for convivial cohabitation in the future when this bloody house is (eventually) complete.  We will then find out if the family we have seen from time to time taking a proprietorial interest is residential or speculative!

In Catalonia we are waiting to find out the details of the adult exercise that we will be allowed to take this weekend.  It appears that there is going to be some sort of timetable for exercise depending on the group to which you belong.  I look forward to details that will allow me to use my bike once more!

     Talking of bikes.  My electric bike is a Mate – that is the name of the manufacturer, not an anthropomorphic designation by me – and generally speaking I am pleased with it.  In spite of the supply delays of the ‘Classic’ version of the bike, I was sufficiently enthused to purchase an ‘improved’ fat wheel version of the bike when it was suggested.

     With the basic bike I bought a back rack, a front light and born, mudguards and, most importantly, a throttle.

     The light and horn arrived before the bike and when fitted the light worked for less than a week.  You can’t replace the light because it is of a unique designed.  You can’t replace the light because the service from Mate is less than useless.  The throttle did not and has not arrived.  It is paid for and should have been delivered last August.  And that delivery date was one that had been delayed itself!  I have written, I have pleaded and the end result is nothing.

     In an astonishing piece of effrontery Mate have actually had the gall to announce a Special Limited Edition of the bike!  They haven’t supplied customers who have paid for items over a year ago, but they can, apparently tool up to produce a new bike!  I am more angry than I can adequately express.  But I am sure that I will give it a go in future posts!

PRIME MINISTER JOHNSON SHOULD RESIGN AT ONCE.

I am glad that Johnson has survived Covid-19 and I congratulate his partner and him on the birth of a son.  But, he should resign for his criminal irresponsibility not only for the grotesque mishandling of the early stages of the crisis, but also for his deliberate flirting with Covid-19 in visits and the Twickenham match.

MATT BECKETT SHOULD RESIGN AT ONCE.

Beckett made the 100k actual tests per day by the end of the month (not the potential for tests) a cast iron policy for which he took full ownership.  He has failed and he must resign.

Johnson’s performance at the press conference showed an almost surrealistic disregard for the actual hard facts of infection and death in the UK.  That his bloody government can actually talk about “success” for anything that they have done is beneath contempt.

RESIGN NOW!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 45 – Wednesday, 29th APRIL

The Great Adventure! Or going to Lidl’s.  Such as the delights when you are in lockdown, you take your pleasures where you can define them!

     There are many more people around in Castelldefels, though as I passed over the motorway bridge the amount of traffic was small for the time of the day.

     Lidl was relatively full, though I didn’t have to wait before I entered the store to wash my hands in liquid alcohol and start shopping.  Most, but not all people inside the store were wearing masks, and I think that it is becoming a generational thing with the older shoppers being much more likely to be masked up rather than the young.

     As people are supposed to be alone when shopping, it does mean that there is a self regulating holdup when it comes to the checkout, and an infuriating lack of urgency by most when it comes to putting purchases inside bags to take away.

     I have to say that my trip to the shop was uneventful.  People were generally good in their distancing and there didn’t seem to be any shortages – apart form my 15 month mature Cheddar – luckily I stocked up during the last shop and so I still have a chunk left.

     I came back via the sea front to check on how people are working with the new regulations allowing a parent with up to three children to go for walks of less than 1km.  That was what most appeared to be doing as far as I could see, and there seemed to be fewer people on the beach, most were walking on the paseo.  It is still an oddly quiet and lonely activity to drive along the beach road, especially when the weather is encouraging people to come out and walk.

     As the weather steadily improves, it is going to be more and more difficult to keep people in their homes and I can’t help feeling that the government’s intention to allow adults to walk for exercise from this weekend is little more than following the feelings of the population rather than following the science.

     We do not have adequate testing in place in Catalonia and without testing then any successful and safe loosening of the restrictions is going to be a matter of luck rather than confident, evidence backed steps back to normality.  It is my fear that the increasing zest to get back to free movement is going to lead to an inevitable spike in infections and deaths in the autumn.

     For me, a sober assessment of my position would suggest that I fit a few of the criteria for ‘at-risk’ and I think that the onus of my continued existence is going to be squarely on what I think is an adequate approach to my own personal safety rather than going with the flow of governmental encouragement back to normality.

     There is much talk of the ‘new normality’, but too much of it is predicated on the basis that mere talk will make it true.  I do not think that many people have really come to terms with the length of time that there might realistically be before anything approaching previous levels of ordinary domestic intimacy will be back with us.  The double kiss of meeting is very much a thing of the past.  At the moment.  But old habits die hard and it doesn’t need much for people to forget that there was ever an interruption.

     Because we cannot see the virus, it takes an effort of the imagination to take danger seriously.  And it takes a steely determination to be constantly on guard; it is too easy to let your defences down momentarily, and that is all the virus needs to infect and threaten.

The pdf file for my chapbook, Coasts of Memory, is far too large to send via a simple email, and I have been looking to find ways to reduce the quality of the photos that are the major space takers.  I had thought that I would have to alter each of the photographic illustrations individually in some way or other, and then re-insert them into the document.  I tired to use one or two ideas and failed until I noticed that there was an option actually called ‘Reduce file size’ on the ‘File’ menu.  I wonder how many times I have opened that menu and simply not noticed that particularly helpful option!  I suppose it is better to have found it now rather than carry on with a series of futile half-arsed attempts at uninformed self-help!

     I have sent two copies of the file to Irene.  The first was a failure and there was no way that she was able to open it, I have sent the second and I have great hopes for that one.  I wait with trepidation!

     If the file is openable then I intend to send it out and ask recipients, if they feel so inclined, to contribute to NHS charities in their respective countries as payment. 

     This is an on-going enterprise!