LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 62 – Saturday, 16th May

A lie-in today!  A quick visit to the bathroom at 7am and a return to bed and the next two and a half hours whisked itself away in a series of complex and no doubt character revealing reveries on that border land between sleep and wakefulness.  This did however mean that my window of legal exercise was somewhat truncated.

     One of the advantages of lockdown is the economy of dressing because I am nowadays fully dressed in six items of apparel: 2 sandals; 1 watch; 1 pair of glasses; 1 T-shirt; 1 pair of shorts-type bathing costume.  This means that after a more than usually cursory wash, I was dressed in seconds.  Pausing only to set Moppy off on her vacuuming sequence I was out and off on the bike.

    There were quite a few people around, especially on the beach and I wondered how many of them were near their homes as the seconds were ticking away before the next tranche of people were entitled to claim the streets and beaches.

     I cycled down as far as the end of the beach Paseo and then returned on the coast road, passing well-spaced queues at bakeries as I returned.  For the last part of my cycle home I re-joined the beach Paseo to check up on the people who were there on my way down.  My anticipation of exasperation was somewhat stymied by the obvious diminution of numbers of exercisers and the appreciable increase in the more obviously elderly section of the population.  In which, of course, I do not place myself, as there are over five months before I can claim entry into the most senior category!

     I was a little over the limit by the time I got back to the gate of my home, but I passed no police and, anyway, there are richer pickings for them on the beach.

     This evening, as long as the weather holds, and there is bright sunlight at the moment, I will have to go for a more substantial cycle to make up for my sloth in keeping to my bed this morning.

     I am also lucky in that I can walk around the communal pool at any time to augment my exercise regime, though it does get somewhat tedious and I feel as I make circuit after circuit that I must look like one of those nodding donkeys that Dickens described in Hard Times as it did the same thing again and again, as being “in a state of melancholy madness”.  This picture is not helped by listening to In Our Times on a Radio 4 podcast and alternatively chuckling and giving a little grunt of satisfaction as another element of knowledge is momentarily added to my store!

     Each time I go out on my bike I am acutely aware that it is a substitution for my pool swim, and not a satisfactory substitution.  Although I look forward to the time when swimming is allowed again, I find it difficult to imagine how they are going to make it safe.  I know that the authorities have said that normal disinfecting techniques in well maintained pools should deal with the virus adequately, it is difficult to see how physical distancing will be safely maintained, especially in the pool itself.

     Our pool has five lanes and with the usual numbers of swimmers, lanes have to be shared.  It is difficult not to bump into your partner swimmer from time to time, and even if you don’t you will be passing each other in close proximity each time you complete a length.

     I suppose that with five lanes, you could have five swimmers and swimmers could book a time to swim?  What about children?  They do not keep to limits and anyway I do not want to be anywhere near them.  It is a difficult problem and one that will not be solved easily I think.  Though I can’t wait to see how the management of the pool suggests a solution.

     It is easy to say that we have not thought the New Normal through – the government certainly has not – and I think that we will be constantly surprised at how many of the aspects of our Old Lives will have to be modified to take account of the virus.

     The National Trust has said that in the future all of its properties can only be visited by those who have a specific ticket, the Old Normal of Just Turning Up is no longer something that you can do.

     My season ticket for the Liceu and the opera season has now been cancelled.  All of the shows that I was due to see have been, at best, postponed.  But, without a vaccine, how is the seating of patrons going to be done?  Will seats have to be reallocated allowing an empty seat between patrons?  How will the audience be brought in and allowed out, without the usual crush?  Will we have to wear masks during the performance? 

     The average age of an opera going audience is substantially older than the general profile of the population and therefore the majority of patrons are in a much higher risk category – how is this going to affect the future of opera?      

     Already the financial hit that the Liceu must have taken has to be substantial and serious; given the other demands on state coffers, how will the Liceu justify extra tax income to keep it alive?  And theatre?  And orchestral concerts?  And ballet?  And museums?  And art galleries? 

     All of those companies must be in dire financial straits!  And what about the corporate sponsors?  They must be feeling the financial pinch as well.  It is a perfect storm of threat for anything cultural. 

     The cultural future is bleak.

Meanwhile on the technological front: my little cleansbot works, but the sensors which tell it is falling off the mattress are not working and so it duly falls.  I am prepared, at the moment to believe that the fault lays in my reading of the instructions – or rather my skimming them and hoping that a few presses of the on button will sort everything out.

     I will obviously have to be a little more careful in my application of haptic hope!

I listened to the Minister for Education and even I was flabbergasted.  He spoke as if the past didn’t exist.  As if the way that the Conservatives have treated teachers and education over the last decade was a completely different sphere of reality.  His mealy mouthed concern for the under privileged was almost comical, his desperate sympathy for kids who were at risk was ludicrous.  What the hell does he think that his government has been doing over the past ten years?  Has the way in which the government has cut social services, education and everything that austerity was used as an excuse to decimate resulting in the present state of the NHS, Care Homes, and . . . it is really hard to express the level of disgust that I feel when someone is speaking and expecting me to forget their destructive history in the very area that they are taking credit for and trying to get me to be sympathetic about their ‘supportive’ attitude!

     Given the way that the Conservative Government has mismanaged virtually everything about the virus so far one can have absolutely not confidence whatsoever about their ability tao make the return of kids to schools anything but a disaster.

     The level of testing in the NHS is inadequate, why should we expect it to be anything other than inadequate in education.  Why should teachers risk their lives when there is little evidence to suggest that there will be little more than empty words of support rather than actual pieces of PPE and availability of sufficient testing?  With the very real threat of kids being asymptomatic there would have to be extensive testing on a regular basis and efficient contact tracing before any reasonable return to school could be contemplated.

     Yet again, I have reason to rejoice in the fact that I am retired!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 61 – Friday, 15th May

For once we were not woken up by the wreckers from next-door executing their usual early morning rendition of Concerto Number Umpteen-and-One for drill, hammer and cement mixer.  I set off on my bike ride in relative silence and with thin sunshine.

     I now no longer even make the attempt to cycle all the way along the sea front to the Marina at Port Ginesta, even if the police are not there to enforce the unobtrusive border between Castelldefels and that part of the jurisdiction of Sitges that arches over the hills to take possession of the end of the bay.

     At the other end of Castelldefels the border with Gavà is blocked off with police tape and, while walkers and joggers duck beneath it and ignore it, I deign to flaunt authority in such a blatant manner and I dutifully turn around and come back home.  I have to admit that it really is not much of a burden to obey our locality restrictions, as I am able to cycle the entire length of Castelldefels and so complete a jaunt of 10k.  Which is quite enough for me.  Though I do miss my swim.

As I am an avid devotee of crowd funding sites and am ever beguiled by new technology, I am happy to report that I am now the proud possessor of a ‘cleansebot’.  As opposed to many of my purchases from Indigogo and the like, this particular innovation might actually be regarded as somewhat timely.

     The ‘cleansebot’ is a small side plate sized circular thick Frisbee-like object that incorporates UV light and wheels and is designed to crawl about one’s bed destroying bacteria and other wildlife haunting the savannah of the mattress and the cover sheet.  It can also be used as a hand-held destroyer and can then be utilized to ravage pillow cases, TV remotes, laptop keyboards, kitchen surfaces, light switches, etc.  Given the present concern about cleanliness this little machine could not have arrived at a better time and, more importantly, this is the only purchase of mine from crowd funding about which Toni has expressed approval – rather than throwing his eyes to heaven in exasperation at my ‘waste of money’!

     I have now retrieved the cleansebot from the bed after its sub-blanketian traverse of our sleeping quarters.  I believe that it has made a difference, because there is no way of actually seeing what it has or has not done!  But the real point is that I have another robot to complicate life just a little more, but cleaner, hopefully cleaner.

As the rain held off (and continues to do so) I was able to go on my evening bike ride.  There is a distinct air of determination to the way that people are walking, running and cycling during our period of allowed activity from 8pm.  Given the fact that it was a Friday (thinking of the past days when that actually meant something) there were more people on the Paseo than usual, especially when the weather was as dull as it was.  There were four or five illegal Plague Kids out of their time, but the most illustrative aspect that I note were the growing numbers of young teenage kids in bike gangs which, if you think about it, is as a good way of meeting your friends as any.  And, as long as you don’t get off your bikes, it’s a good way of keeping the necessary physical distancing that we have been advised to maintain.

     Although I joke about the concept of Plague Kids, I really do feel that every young person is a potential viral assassin!  And that attitude is going to take a long time or a quick vaccine to get rid of.

     When we talk about the New Normal, distancing must become the attitude of choice and of necessity.  I wonder how long the attitudes will last though?

In the UK the government is trying to rewrite the narrative of neglect that characterised the situation of Care Homes, it is doing this via nauseating expressions of present concern and a determination to change the approach of government, conveniently forgetting which government has been in power for the last decade!

On a lighter note, our next Catalan lesson is on Monday.  With any reasonable luck there will be more people in our virtual classroom than my good lone self.  We have had to do some homework and presumably that will be the basis of conversation (!) in our next class – assuming that it works.   
     I love technology, as I have mentioned above, but when it is linked to teaching it has an almost inevitable fail factor built in to the whole enterprise.   
     But, as always, I live in hope and positive expectations!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 60 – Thursday, 14th May

So, there will be border controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.  The obvious lie that they wouldn’t be needed parroted by the Brexit Barbarians is now crystal clear.  I read it in the Guardian, but I didn’t hear it anywhere else.  A key component of the fantasy agenda of the xenophobes now shown to be exactly that.  And what reaction has there been?  With Covid-19 in full fury we have different priorities and yet again, this Teflon Prime Minister and his discredited party will get away with it.

     Does anyone believe the government’s assertion that 100k test have regularly been given to actual people?  They have manipulated the figures by including multiple tests on the same individual and also including postal test sent out but not completed.  The basic trouble is that this government has a trust-worthy rating of precisely zero.  But, in the Trumpian times in which we live, what used to be generally accepted truth is now only one of a multitude of possibilities in a world of “alternative truths” or what used to be known as lies.

I went for my morning bike ride (no Plague Children for once) in light sunshine, but that was the best part of the day and I made an executive decision not to go for my evening jaunt and there was light rain and I am not fanatical about my cycling!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 59 – Wednesday, 13th May

Though the wind is brisk, the sun is out and I am typing on the terrace of the third floor al fresco. The screen brightness is set at maximum and the type size is 16 point, so I can actually see the screen. What I type is somewhat irrelevant at the moment, because the real joy is being outside and, stripped to the half (a description I have always found unsettlingly erotic) pretending to myself that I am actually doing some work.

      It also makes a change to get away, if only for a sun-drenched moment, from the pressing concerns of the virus ridden world!

     My view from where I am sitting takes in the tops of the pine trees for which my neighbourhood is famous, the pool of a neighbouring collection of houses and a part of the street. I can hear the sea but alas, I cannot see it unless I crouch down and look through the top branches of the trees (see above) and I get a small triangle of what could be water. If I stand, then I get another triangular view of distant water with he third side being the horizon. If the trees that surround the neighbours’ pool were cut down, l would have an uninterrupted view of the sea, or at least part of it – though I do not expect to gain much sympathy from my moans.

     I am typing outdoors because Toni is (hopefully) working his technological magic on my non-starting Apple, and past experience dictates that my helpful hovering does not lead to a productive working environment. It is, after all, a wise couple that knows their mutual working limitations.

     Though, having said that, we have survived the constructivist horrors of mantling various pieces in the IKEA “Broken Relationships” range (i.e. anything) and a couple who survive building a bed with built-in drawers with instructions that looked more like a cheaply printed Mayan calendar gets to sleep in it. Literally.  So, Toni is doing his ‘thing’ while I do mine: writing.

     Toni has just appeared and asked me about a ‘restore’ date to which I have agreed and will now type with my fingers firmly crossed, so please forgive any typing errors.

     I remember on earlier Mac machines I would, from time to time, get a pixelated drawing of a round black bomb with a fizzing fuse with the alarming information that a ‘Fatal System Error’ was about to take place. I invariably panicked and then ignored it because there was always nothing that I could do about it, so I just soldiered on and hoped that a few random key presses would placate whatever anarchistic longings were inside the machine and that it would return to jocosity and placidity ‘because I wanted it to.’ And to be fair, it usually did.

     As opposed, for example, for the numerous Windows machines into contact with which I came.  In the early days when I had acquired a ‘real’ computer that used floppy discs of the smaller variety, my predilection for Mac computers was at odds with the educational establishment’s slavish following of the false gods of Microsoft.  The incompatibility problems (and there were always incompatibility problems) were constantly frustrating, with programs distributed by the school or the local education authority only working convincingly in Microsoft Windows environments and causing pain and anger for people like myself with a Mac.  On the other hand, I constantly found my Mac environment to be much more user friendly than Windows!

Toni has been successful in repairing my computer and it is working properly.  Though Netflix said that it could not load up and advised me to check that I had the latest version of Firefox.  I checked, I did, and Netflix worked.  Why?  The ways of electronic acceptance are strange.

     As far as I can see all my files are in place and they are all backed up in theory anyway.  In theory.

I have decided that this day’s blog is not going to even mention you-know-what for a single glorious day.

     Tomorrow normal sarcasm and bitterness will be resumed!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 58 – Tuesday, 12th May

I slept the sleep of the dead after my exertions yesterday.  Though thinking about it, that metaphor could have been better chosen.  In fact, it is a wonder I ever get to sleep given my insatiable appetite for the depressingly predictable latest escapades of Orangeblond a portmanteau word I will now use to refer to the sad populist narcissistic twins of the USA and UK, as they vie with each other to show which one cares less about the population they pretend to ‘serve’.

     Try as I might, I cannot wean myself from the heady narcotic cocktail of BBC news and The Guardian, with a dash of Spanish and Catalan televisualisation to add an exotic spice to my neurosis.  Though, thinking about it, wouldn’t an absence of neurosis in these times argue a disassociation from what is actually going on that would be a compelling basis for a text book definition of mental illness?

     No one in Britain (including [especially?] the government) appears to have the slightest idea about what has been ““decided”” – and the double inverted commas there appear to be far too subtle to give a clear idea of the tenuous nature of the word as it is applied to government policy.

     Yesterday/today/tomorrow is when the population should/should not go to work by foot/bike/Star trek beam if possible and not by public transport unless you have to  .  .  .  and one could go on, but this government defies irony and sarcasm.

     600 deaths today, three thousand new cases – how is this a situation in which it is sensible to ease the lockdown.  The testing target was missed AGAIN yesterday – and without adequate testing, anything that the government says is nugatory.  So no surprise there then!

My bike ride this morning was fairly early, but there were many people around, with bikes outnumbering cars and the same thing on my bike ride in the evening.  The evening ride should be Plague Kid Free as their time to roam around ends at 7pm – except of course for those parents who don’t want to stick by the rules.  There were over twenty Plague Kids joining the adults on the paseo; and yes, I counted, just as I counted the number of cyclists who had lights on when I made my way back from the far end of Castelldefels (23 out of 127, if you are interested) and thought to myself, if people are not prepared to do something as simple as switching lights on in the darkness, what hope do we have for something more sophisticated and difficult when connected to the requirements for a successful lockdown?

     Not good!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 57 – Monday, 11th May

The weather forecast for today was totally wrong and I therefore took advantage of what I understood to be freakish sunshine and went for my morning bike ride.  This time, I did not attempt to go into the Marina at Port Ginesta, being a law-abiding citizen of Castelldefels and not of Sitges, so I turned around at the end of the cycle lane on the Paseo and came home.

     After my dutifully disturbing read of the Guardian, it was then time for the sojourn to the shops.  Masked, and latex gloved I drove to Caprabo to get the ant traps and I attempted to do the rest of my shop there.  Not going to happen, so I slipped along to Lidl to finish off.

     In spite of the fact that Lidl did not have the 15-month mature Cheddar, I willingly settled for the soapier stuff and thought that Lidl is basically a better store than the small Caprabo that I frequent.  But, and there is always a but, there were things that I could get in Caprabo that are never available in Lidl; Lidl is never a one stop store, and that is a real disadvantage: when in lockdown you really do not want to visit multiple shops – you never know when you may come across a Plague Child or three!

     At the end of the shop, I was well and truly knackered, and not finding a parking space outside the house because of the bloody workers next door parking their various vans in OUR spaces was the final, energy sapping straw!

     I gave cursory help in unloading the car when it was parked in the front garden space, and then the heavy lifting, and the meticulous cleaning and putting away was done by Toni while I, literally, put my feet up!  [Are there too many commas in that sentence? Ed.]

It is almost lunchtime and we should be back in rain, if not thunderstorms, according to the weather forecast.  I wonder what the weather is like in the UK, and I wonder how people have reacted to the Blond Buffoon’s clear as mud instructions, suggestions, fugitive thoughts or whatever his broadcast was supposed to be.  It comes to something that, even after a scripted talk by the Buffoon, ministers have to be deployed at once to explain what he might have meant.  For example, who would have know that when the Buffoon uses the word ‘Monday’ he actually means ‘Wednesday’ – perhaps our Prime Minister (sic) is working to an Old Etonian (or Estonian, as my spellchecker wanted it) calendar where there is a languorous two-day difference from the Proles’ week to allow for an elite cushion of prevarication and indolence?

     My British friends and relations are not all of a type, but they are united in their contempt for the leaders who fail to take responsibility, fail to lead, fail to be imaginative, fail to save lives, and then treat us with condescension assuming that we have memories of the same capacity as the much maligned goldfish!  We have not!

     On a Catalan television station that had academics commenting on the Covid-19 Crisis, I noted one subtitle on a part of the discussion had something about the “extreme recklessness” of one group of nations in their approach to the virus.  Four states were listed: Mexico, Brazil, the United States of America – and the UK!  What exalted, socially responsible company to be in!  With equally delightful leaders!  God help us all, what have the Conservatives reduced us to?

     The fall out from the Sunday burbling meander to the nation continues with reactions of bafflement, amazement and disgust now augmented with further negative abstract nous being applied to the muddy exposition that was supposed to enlighten us this afternoon.

     When, by the way the Blond Buffoon going to accept responsibility for being Prime Minister?  He has a duty to appear before the press and answer questions; he has a duty to appear in Parliament and respond, he has a duty to justify his actions in a democratic society.

     We know that he cannot be trusted live to answer questions without there being an extensive amount of damage limitation after he has waffled his way through questions.  He was too frightened to be questioned by Andrew Neil; he fled into a fridge rather than be questioned by a television reporter; he has still not appeared before the Parliamentary Liaison Committee; he has missed PMQs; he prefers pre-submitted questions on Facebook to hard questioning from trained reporters; how often has he actually been in parliament – the parliament that he has tried so hard to limit, either by proroguing it for ILLEGAL lengths of time or by simply ignoring it?  Illness, holidays and cowardice – anything other than facing up to what he has done and is planning (if that is not too strong a word) to do, anything other than public accountability.

     And, in spite of the second highest death rate from Covid-19 IN THE WORLD; in spite of the obvious U turns, the evasions, the missed targets, the criminal lack of preparedness, he still has a reasonable amount of public support!

     I understand that, in times of crisis, there is an understandable “rallying around the flag” effect, to go with the authority that one knows to work together and get through this all, sort of thing – but with him and the motely crew that he has gathered about himself?  Really?  What, in any aspect of his past life, would encourage anyone to trust or rely on this proven liar and opportunist?

The rain-filled day has not materialized and so I will be able to go for my evening bike ride as well, making the culmination of an excitement-filled day – you have to take your pleasures where you find them in lockdown!

     But just to make sure that I do not become complacent in my joy, my computer upstairs has decided to half start.  I get the Apple logo and the little line underneath that gradually fills up to the half way point, and then it blacks out.  With all my years of experience of the wayward ways of computers (I will not frighten you with the nomenclature of the early version of Windows that made me the gibbering technological wretch that I am today) I have turned the computer off and will hope that turning it on again will make all things well.

     As far as computers are concerned, I am a simple, trusting, peasant soul when things go wrong.  And I comfort myself with the fact that I have two laptop computers (at least) that will keep me typing!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 56 – Sunday, 10th May

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain and the threat of the “thin end of the wedge” challenge to exercise: if you don’t go out for your bike ride because of a little dampness, then what will you do if the sky is merely overcast tomorrow?  Will that be excuse enough to defer effort?

     Admittedly, rainy days are in the minority in this country, and therefore the opportunities for indolence are fewer too, but the rot can set in at any moment, and the dust can settle on a machine that is meant for motion!

     I do have waterproof leggings and a lightweight rain jacket so it is perfectly possible (if unpleasant) to go for a bike ride and stay relatively dry.  On the other hand, it does make the ride more duty than pleasure.  On the other hand (making three, by my computation!) exercise is essential for the preservation of a healthy lifestyle under lockdown and so the (unpleasant) effort should probably be made.

     As you can imagine, I indulged in such pleasant prevarication, while reading my Daily Dose of Misery from the news section of the digital Guardian and doing the Quick Crossword and, of course, drinking my essential cup of tea.  Time well spent.  And dry too!

     Eventually, I decided to test the weather and, after extensive sampling of the climatic conditions (i.e. opening the kitchen window) I reasoned that, while it was still damp it was not actually raining so the ride could be taken in relative comfort.

     It was only when I was gloved and helmeted with the bike newly charged and ready to go, that I looked at my watch.  I had missed my age-specific designated time slot for exercise, so back upstairs for a cup of tea?

     In the eagerness to return to the comfort of the sitting room I conveniently forgot the possibility of the mind numbing circling of the communal pool as a substitute for the more open and interesting vistas of the Paseo.  It comes to something that I have to write about it before the possibility of doing something that I outlined in the previous sentence becomes an imperative.   Moppy (for it is she, god bless her mechanical revolving cleaning pads) is about her business on our tile floors and therefore the presence of my obstructing feet are an impediment to her efficiency and I should remove them to the pool.  So I will.  And service will be resumed after I have listened on another episode of ‘In Our Time’ on the hoof!

     Which was Mandeville’s ‘Fable of the Bees’ – a book I own and have never read, but now I will be able to bluff my way and make links with present economic and sociological thought.  That’s what ‘In Our Time’ is all about!  Learning with walking stick in one hand and umbrella in the other and weaving my way around sun loungers to make the circuits a little bit more interesting.

     As the weather is glum, there are few people about and I am sure that gatherings of the ‘bike gangs’ (that makes them sound so much more threatening than these al fresco bike mounted chat groups are) will be loath to form without the clemency of warm weather.

     As it is Sunday, I will make one of my commercial outings to the pollo a last to get our chicken meal.  As well as facilitating the provision of food it also gives an interesting view of how well physical distancing is enduring.  So far, the distancing has been exemplary, although rain does encourage grouping under awning, so it will test discipline!

     And I can now confirm that discipline was preserved and, apart from the kids who now seem not to wear mask as a matter of course.

Rather than listen to the Blond Buffoon who was speaking at 7 pm I went out in the rain on my bike rather than listen to his bluster.  The lead up to this talk (Why on a Sunday?  Why not in parliament?) was a master class in communication ineptitude as expectation was allowed to distort any possible message.  The new slogan “Stay alert” is confusing and dangerously ambiguous, it just adds to the general air of desperate ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ approach that has characterised the methodology of this government.

     Spain too is easing restrictions in a stepped approach.  You would have thought that any easing would only be in those areas where the virus had been shown to be limited, with extensive testing to verify any such limitation.  Why then has Madrid decided that it is one of the regions where restrictions can be relaxed when the number of deaths and new infections is still rife?

     In Spain and the UK, it would appear that the political is more important that public health, and unless that is reversed then we are going to pay for that in more and more deaths.

Tomorrow is our weekly shop, something I look forward to with pathetic excitement!  There is an added delight this time, as I have to find some ant traps to combat a mild infestation upstairs.  Always something to make like just that little bit more interesting!

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!