LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS – Day 92 – Monday 15th June

So, I was wrong about our moving phases today; we are still in Phase 2, I think that there will be another week before we move to a more relaxed point in this never ending saga of the virus.

     I did not manage to get my slot either today or tomorrow for my early morning swim and my slot for Wednesday is at 11 am to mid day.  This is playing havoc with the arrangements for my ‘lesson’ with my friend in the pool who wants to improve his English by having conversation classes with me.  Still, I think that the classes are worth continuing, with benefits for us both!

We went out to lunch to one of our previous (i.e. pre-Covid) haunts.  The seating in the restaurant had been adjusted to reflect the reduction in allowed capacity and, as we were quite late getting to the place, we had a pick of the empty tables.

     We chose one in the same approximate place where we usually sit and then we observed the service.  The wearing of masks by the serving staff was patchy.  They seemed to take every opportunity to remove them or to push them down to their chins.  Even when they were being worn, some of the staff only covered their mouths and not their noses.

     The restaurant also has a thriving delivery service which utilises scooter riders to deliver the food.  When the riders came up to the counter to collect the next order (a counter which is also the bar for the place) they were not wearing masks.

     I can well imagine that wearing masks when doing your job in a restaurant is an irritating annoyance – but it is also the legal requirement.  Toni actually asked the girl who brought us the menu (shouldn’t it have been a one page disposable thing?) to wear her mask – she did, but she shouldn’t have needed to have been asked. 

     Toni became more uncomfortable as the meal progressed and we saw further casual attitudes towards the clinical necessity of wearing masks.  I do not think that we will be going back, in spite of the quality and value for money of the food.

     Nothing in the general attitude of people that we see around us gives us any confidence that this pandemic is going to trail off into memory.  Yes, people are eager to find the freedom that comes with summer.  They want to go to the beach, take a dip and sunbathe, enjoy a drink, socialise with friends.  But if the crowded beach scenes that I observed last weekend become the norm then we should expect a resurgence of the virus in a few weeks’ time.

Tomorrow we are going to Terrassa for a Name Day of one of Toni’s nephews.  This will be the longest trip that we have made for months.  We got the presents in a large supermarket and, apart from the fact that everybody was wearing a mask, it was like a normal day.  And we are nowhere near normality at all.  We are kidding ourselves that each day brings us nearer to the end of the crisis and a few good, sunny days will knock the virus out of our lives for good.

     The situation in the Republican states in America; the re-imposition of lockdown of parts of Peking; the situation in Brazil; the increase in cases in India; the on-going chaos of the UK; Argentina, Peru, Africa – wherever you look there is evidence that we have not managed this virus with any degree of authority. 

     I shudder for what the next few months might bring.

     Obviously I hope that we find a vaccine or at least a treatment; I hope that measures put in place around the world lessen the impact of the virus; I hope that the fatal demagogues in positions of power finally begin to listen to reason; I hope that governments take compassionate measures to protect the less fortunate and at-risk members of society including the old, the ill and schoolkids.

     The disruption of the virus does give an opportunity for an inventive and empathetic government to re-think priorities and concentrate attention on the power-less, rather than the oligarchs throughout the capitalist world who are urging their ‘puppet’ politicians to maintain the status quo which has given the rich even more during this time of crisis.

     The real plague is not Covid-19, it is the power structure that allow a disaster to become a revenue generator for those who already have too much.

     In the ‘good old days’ when Theatre In Education groups came and performed in schools, I was able to welcome one company to my last Cardiff school, it was called the 7:84 Company, because seven percent of the population of the United Kingdom owned eighty-four percent of the wealth.  Do the sums, that means that for ninety-three percent of the population that left just sixteen percent of the wealth to be distributed among them all.  The only thing that has changed is that now, the disproportions are even greater.

     And what about the under-privileged?  One newspaper reported that about 2 million kids in lockdown in the UK have done little or no school work during this period.  You can bet your bottom dollar that the privileged have been working assiduously – so the gaps between those who have and those who have not will become greater.  There will be a whole generation of kids who will be playing catch-up with little or no technology to allow them to access on-line material.

     The government has already stated that the coupon or voucher system which allows poorer kids to have a school meal, will end with the end of term.  How much has this government poured into the hands of million and billion -aire owners of firms and industries?  But they are not going to feed the most vulnerable in our society.

     It is a damning condemnation of our society that in the 300 years since the publication of Swift’s Modest Proposal, there hasn’t been a time when it is more apt than now.  For those of you who haven’t read it, it is readily available on line.  It is a fairly short work, but the punch that it packs is out of all proportion to its brevity, and it is sickening because it still describes the reality of the way that we are.

     Some governments have come or are coming out of this crisis with their reputations improved; some are still in a slough of their own making. 

     What has happened and is going on happening in the UK should be the moment when the people stand up to be counted and say, “No more!”  There has to be a better way than allowing the hollow man Johnson to kill even more than he and his cabinet lightweight misfits have already done.

     The decade of Conservative rule has cheapened, humiliated, divided, impoverished and coarsened, we deserve better!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 91 - Sunday, 14th June

Cloudy, sun, breeze: not the perfect sun drenched Sunday that our visitors were hoping for, but still good enough to come out for.  Castelldefels was crowded today.

     Not as crowded as it could be, but certainly fuller than it has been for a while.  People are determined to have sunny fun by the sea.

     From the perspective of my bike rides, I am able to note the increase in traffic and the numbers of people doing what they do best in our long beach town: walk along the paseo to see and to be seen.

     Rules?  Well, most people are somewhat sketchy about what part of which set of rules is applying at any particular time, and the fragmentation of Spain into the regions and countries with their own system of lockdown and their own notation of phases and you have something purpose made for confusion.

     Catalonia has hot-spots of viral infection and those were kept back from the general loosening of restrictions.  We in Castelldefels are part of the Barcelona region, which is itself sub-divided into further parts each of which has its own set of rules and its own level of phasing.

     As far as we know we are now in Phase 2, but tomorrow, Monday, we will be in Phase 3.  The cafes and restaurants that have survived so far are desperate to open as much as they can and start making up for the disastrous season that they have had so far this year.  The loss of the Easter holiday period is going to be difficult to make up for and the fact that they will not be back to full occupancy is going to make future survival difficult.

     It will be interesting to go into town tomorrow and see exactly what is open and what is likely to open.  I have a need to get my mobile phone repaired as it is a complete, but working, shattered mess.  The phone is far too expensive to junk, and I am prepared to pay up to 20% of its cost new to get it back into something like its original condition.  I live, as always, on hope!

I have been told that I have ‘passed’ my Catalan course and I am entitled to a certificate to show my ‘ability’.  All I have to do is collect it from my ‘school’ when that institution opens its doors again.  Unfortunately, in collecting my certificate, I will have to speak the language in which I have obtained an alleged proficiency, and that is a daunting barrier.  Which tells you something about the worth of the piece of paper that I am debating whether to humiliate myself and get!  Choices, choices!

As we had chicken from the pollo a last yesterday, we did not have our traditional lunch today.  Instead we had the albondigas that I bought in case somebody didn’t want the chicken.  They are very good, and they come with a ‘home made’ sauce from the pollo a last place.  One portion is not quite sufficient to form a meal for two, so I augmented the sauce provided and cooked some pasta.  Toni was very impressed with the final result and demanded that I repeat the repast at some future date.  As the selection of ingredients for the augmentation was based more on inspiration than recipe I think that a repeat performance is going to be the other side of difficult, but I remember most of the ingredients (at least two of which Toni would demand excluded if he realized they were there) and it is likely to be edible even if it will have serious differences from the food that had his accolades.  I can’t help feeling that there is a wider metaphor lurking somewhere in those last sentences, together with life advice!

Next week sees the second ‘lesson’ with my friend in the pool and I am having fun thinking of topics to extend his vocabulary.  I have been unable to get an 8 am start for Monday or Tuesday, but I will probably meet him at the changeover tomorrow as one hour ends and the next starts and so I can find out if he is prepared to wait for me to have my swim and join me for a later breakfast chat, or other arrangements will have to be made.

Toni is determined to ‘sort out’ the garden and this needs some thought and preparation.  We should go to a garden centre and get some plants and compost.  Now that the pine trees have been cut back, our front garden actually gets some sunshine and for the first time in many years, weeds are actually able to push their heads above the pine needle carpet which, this year is not there!  We might think of a few garden boxes and get some instant colour.  If the plant places are open.

     This week will see a more determined approach to getting back to something approaching what used to be normal.  It remains to be seen if we have the determination to do so.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 90 - Saturday 13th June

Toni’s Name Day and the first time that somebody other than ourselves has been inside the house.  The Family came down and, as we were unable to go out to our restaurant of choice, we had a meal from the pollo a last and so we had eight of us to lunch – the first time in well over ninety days that we have had more than the two of us to a meal in the house.  And we touched elbows.  Family members and we touched elbows!  For a tactile people like the Catalans this restraint is more than foreign!

     As my present world is quite small I tend to look at the ordinary things around me and extrapolate from those to the general feelings of the population.  So, while waiting for my turn in the queue for the chicken I had time (a lot of time, the place is very popular) to watch the way in which people queued.  As the trip to the pollo a last is a weekly event I can see weekly change in the way that people queue.

     This week the queue was closer packed.  Yes, we were all wearing masks (and I had a pair of latex gloves!) but the proximity suggests a further diminishing of the fear that the virus has over us.  This suggests that on Monday most people are going to assume that to all intents and purposes, the pandemic is over.

     The progress in Catalonia might be real; it might be self-delusion, we don’t really know because the amount of testing is still limited.  The government can say what it likes and point to diminishing figures to support its case, but the fundamental testing that might give us a more real picture has not happened.  We are still largely in the dark about the true extent of the virus.  And those of us who think that we in in one of the groups at risk are going to have to look after ourselves.

     Although cooler today with patchy sunshine, it was still summery and there were lots of visitors on the beach and they were not physically distancing in the accepted manner.  This is still at the start of our delayed summer and with people probably not taking foreign holidays there is even more likelihood of extra visitors and even more likelihood of further breakdowns in the already loosening system.

     If I am concerned about the situation here in Catalonia and in the UK, the news from South America is much more disturbing.  Brazil is already a disaster the loss of life by the virus made worse by the political viciousness of the demented president.  A radio programme suggested that 50% of the population of Argentina might be officially classified as “in poverty” in the very near future.  Other South American nations are near financial collapse and so it goes on.

     Trump seems to have decided to ignore the numbers connected with the virus and is only truly concerned with the numbers that he is likely to get in his idiotic rallies.  He is only concerned with his re-election everything else, including the welfare of the country of which he is the titular head.  Populism is no way to deal with the real problems of racism and viral infection and that is what we have been cursed with at the present time.

At least I got some work done today, the next book is developing nicely, though it is one of those ‘publications’ that might never see the light of a pair of covers, but I am enjoying working on it!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS . Day 89 - Friday 12th June

LOCKDOWN [Phase 2] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 80 – Friday, 12^th June

Going to have my swim an hour later than normal jolts my sense of the rhythm of the day, not enough to dislocate me too much, but still unsettling.

     As we only shop once a week, our lives are basically centred on the house – with one or two lunches out a week.

     This pattern is about to be suddenly changed.  Tomorrow is Toni’s Name Day and The Family is going to make a joint visit to celebrate with him.  This will be the first time that we have had someone other than ourselves in the house for around three months.  We have not seen friends or family in that time as well.

     True, I have seen people I know in the streets from time to time, but just in passing.  The only conversations that I have had have been with people in the sports centre.  I suppose that I have had a more social experience of the lockdown than Toni has had, so this visit will be a real difference.

     We are not sure about the protocol for the visit.  At least two of us will be in the most at-risk category and none of the people meeting together have been tested.  We can eat outside on the terrace of a restaurant and maintain physical distance?  We can touch elbows?  We can wear masks?  It may well turn out to be one of the oddest Name Day celebrations that we have experienced.

     This weekend will be the end of this particular phase of the lockdown and we should be in Phase 3 on Monday.  Whatever that means.  We get nearer and nearer to the old normality but I don’t think that many consider that the sort of life that we will be living will be anything like what we almost remember from February and earlier.  How little it took to change our lives and our expectations!

     The weather has not been wonderful over the last few days, but it is getting more and more summery and people will want to go on to the beach and swim in the sea.  I think from Monday, we will be allowed to do that.

     The beach cafes have now all been constructed.  Restaurants are allowing people to eat inside as well as on the terraces.  More shops are opening.

     The end of this month is when the ‘normal’ school holidays in this country would usually start.  Spain has decided that students will not return to school until September at the earliest.  Teachers I know have been trying to deliver at least some of the curriculum via the Internet and there is every likelihood that at least part of the curriculum will still be delivered via the Internet using Zoom or Goggle.

     In the UK the government has talked about summer school catch up sessions but there has been no discernable efforts to make those a reality, and god alone knows who the government expects to teach these kids. What extra teachers are going to be in place for September to teach the extra classes that are going to have to be created to deal with physical separation?  But, there again, why should we expect forethought from this bunch of Brexit blinded trash?

     The next couple of week should be very revealing and will define the eventual success of the response to the virus.

    

CASTELLDEFELS LOCKDOWN - Day 88 - Thursday 11th June

The urge not to obey the alarm this morning was quite strong, and for a few rebellious seconds I resisted the urge to get up.  But get up I did and went through the necessary rituals to get me ready for my swim.

     I was slightly late for the 8 am start as I took the car, the weather being inclement or at least threatening to be so, but a free laconversation lesson, ne was waiting for me as previously booked.

     At some point this system is going to break down, probably not the early slots which have been booked by the fanatics (including myself) but at other times, someone is just going to say that they can’t be bothered and simply not turn up.  I wonder what the consequences, if any, there will be for that sort of inconsideration?  I have been able to book the first few days without a problem, but tomorrow I failed to get a place and so my swim will take place at 9 am rather than an hour earlier.  That could actually work to my advantage as people leave before the end of their allotted time, so I could get some extra swimming lengths for my money!

     The end of my swim saw the start of my ‘lesson’ with MLF and we had a generally wide ranging conversation which started off with politics and took in a variety of subject ‘ere it came to an end.  He has asked if he can have ‘lessons’ once a week for a month or so and I have agreed.

     One piece of information from our chat emerged so that I now realise that I was taught how to play padel by his son!  It’s a small world, and other clichés of that sort!

Today has been a tiring day.  We haven’t done that much apart from some superficial tidying up of the garden and putting out the organic rubbish to be collected on Friday morning.  We need some sand and some compost, but we simply didn’t feel like making the effort to go out on one of our trips into the wider world to get it.

The Thursday NT Live production was a filmed version of the Nottingham Playhouse production of The Madness of King George the Third with Gattis in the title role.  It was thoroughly and guiltily enjoyable.

     It was the sort of episodic theatrical production with an efficient set and snappy scene changes that made you long to be part of the audience.  Bennet’s writing was pithy and engrossing and Gattis commanded the stage with a physical and emotional performance.

     Although set, obviously, in the time of George III, there were constant links to modern politics and up to the moment concerns; the play spoke to an audience in 2020 as age old themes and tropes bumped into any complacent historical restrictions.

     I now want to see the film, that I am ashamed to admit that I still have not seen, in spite of specific and pointed recommendations.  I wonder if it is on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Where have the comments on Covid gone?  What mention have I made of the virus and its changes.  What of the statistics?  It seems, more and more to be like ‘yesterday’s news’ something you read about (if you can be bothered) not something that makes a real difference in your life.

     Yes, I wear my mask when I go out, and it is mandatory if you are in a situation where you cannot guarantee physical distancing, but for exercise masks are not necessary and have been largely dispensed with.

     Something that has concentrated my mind is that The Family might pay us a visit on Saturday.  I don’t know the exact composition of The Family, but my first reaction was one of lazy panic.  What are the exact rules for meeting members from another household?  Where do you meet them?  Saturday is Toni’s Name Day and a gathering of the clan would not be inappropriate, especially as Toni has seen no member of his family for almost two months.

     Something to concentrate the mind!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 86 - 10th June

It is getting progressively more difficult to tell that there is a pandemic still raging in this country.  A couple of days into whatever stage we have reached so far and people are behaving, for the most part, perfectly normally.

     People generally wear masks in town, though along the paseo they are very much in a minority.  The tables on the terraces of the restaurants are more generously spaced out and now there are tables inside the restaurants as well.

     It is still difficult to tell how many of the smaller shops are going to open after the virus has finally been dealt with.  The supermarket that I went to yesterday and which is closing down has been failing for some time and most of us are amazed that it has managed to last this long.

My early morning swim is now part of a regime again, it doesn’t take long to slip back into sometime established ways, though it might be difficult to get the same slot in which to swim each day.  We are only allowed to book up to 2 activities at a time and as there are only five lanes in the pool and one person to a lane, it is going to be difficult to bag a spot at the same time each day.  So far, I have been lucky and I am OK until Thursday, but I think that I am going to have to get used to using the kitchen calendar more noting the different times when I have been able to get into the pool.

     I met two teachers from the British School just before my swim and they told me that the lessons have been on line for some time and that they will not be going back until September at the earliest.

     In the UK the bunch of inadequate wankers that make up the government have done yet another U-turn about their insistence of kids returning to school in England before the end of the summer.  They have, at last, done the special sum of cutting class size and finding physical space to put double the number of classes in the space that previously accommodated half the number.  To say nothing of the extra teachers that are needed to make this happen.

     In education we are, of course, used to politicians telling us to do something and then ignoring the advice of experts saying why what these ideological purists want is simply not possible.  The real problem is that, with the cabinet of no-talents that Johnson has formed around himself, every department is failing and as chaotic as education, to say nothing of the writhing incompetence that the Home Office has come to personify.  It is intensely depressing to think that the immediate future of my country is in such inept hands.

     And then there’s Brexit.  Dear god!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEDFELS - DAY 85 - 9th May

Up at 7 am for my first swim in the local pool for months.

     It was well arranged.  At the desk we were met by a man with one of those hand-held thermometers that are pointed at your forehead.  We were allowed to use the changing rooms, but whole areas including the showers were taped off with what looked like police tape.

     In the pool itself, we were urged to wash our hands with the alcohol soap and shower.  We had to place our clothes that we had packed into our backpacks in the changing rooms, on plastic chairs spaced out along the side of the pool.

     There were five of us, one to a lane and we were told that we had fifty minutes until the next group of swimmers came in to take our places.

     I had previously been told by one of my swimming friends (the five of us were regulars) that the pool temperature was far too cold and that I should make a complaint about it – but when I jumped in I found the water pleasantly cool, just the right temperature for vigorous swimming.

     I did my 1.5k and a few hundred metres more because I stayed until the people to replace us arrived.

   We had to shower in the pool, so there was no soap used and then we had to exit the pool on a different route from the one we used to get in.  For the first time I used the stairs at the front of the pool that go down to the children’s’ changing rooms.  Obviously, there were no kids there so we had to change there and then use another exit door to leave.  All in all, it was a very professional exercise which kept us apart and obeyed the dictates of lockdown.

     The café is now open again and I was able to have my tea and bocadillo de tortilla francesa, as well as a welcome gossipy conversation with an ex-fellow student of a Spanish class of a year ago.  Apart from our masks and the fact that we bumped elbows and kept our distance, it was almost ‘normal’.

     By the time I got back, had another cup of tea and completed the Guardian Quick Crossword, it was time for my bike ride (this time with a waterproof coat backed into one of my many backpacks) down to the Sitges part of Castelldefels and back.  The new bike lane was further closed off as workmen were installing a version of our ill-fated ‘armadillos’ to separate the lane from the rest of the road.  They had coned-off the outside lane, so only the crappy gutter lane was available for bumpy riding.

     As the weather was not of the most congenial it was difficult to tell the composition of the people wandering around given that we have now passed into another phase of the loosening of lockdown.  Apart from the times reserved for our older citizens, we are now free (I think) to take exercise when we want.  I have not been into town to see how the reopening of various shops is going.

     One shop, a supermarket next to another (and better one) is in the process of liquidation with much of the stuff that was left on rapidly emptying shelves with 40% off.  My ‘discount’ at the end of my hurried shop (I was there at the tail end of the day and the last person to be served) was over 40 euros!  I panic bought pepper and Earl Grey tea because, you never know.  I actually went there for bottled water for Toni and came back with three bags full!  Some things are instinctive for a mother-trained shopper like myself!

     Tomorrow I have booked my place in the pool for another 8 am start.  Wednesday is more problematic as all the 8 am places are gone and it took me a while to find the other timed places in the app that we have to use to book our times, but this will become second nature in time.

     And talking of time, how much longer is all this going to continue?  How long is this system going to be in place?  I think that our original thoughts were that this would all be over sometime during the summer and, if things had been properly arranged then we would avoid a Second Spike in the autumn.  Who knows what is going to happen?  Our governments certainly do not!