The twist of a wrist!

 

Whatever sub-set of minor deities that manage the equitable distribution of gadgets to the pathetically receptive there be, they appear to be working overtime to restore the Equilibrium of Justified Appreciation in my life.

Yesterday I took delivery of a cordless vacuum cleaner whose ownership may, in the immortal words of Sellers and Yateman (authors of “1066 And All That”) be regarded as Right but Repulsive. 

Yes, one needs a vacuum cleaner and one might try and work up a little enthusiasm for the item by purchasing it from a gushingly enthusiastic start-up company on line, but a vacuum cleaner remains terminally quotidian.  Its very usefulness is almost a Black Point denying it a high gadgetified status.  I know that there are people who swoon with admiration at the chunky rounded smoothness of a Smeg (pause for surpressed sniggering at its mystifyingly uncomfortable name) refrigerator.  But I can’t.  Fridges, ovens, microwaves, washing machines, tumble driers and all things kitchenoid are White Goods under the meaning of the act and can therefore not be considered as Desirable Things.  Essential?  Yes; lust-worthy, no.

But a watch?  Especially a smart watch?  Emphatically yes.

Nowadays one doesn’t really need a watch.  The time is all around us in unexpected places, shining out from all those little screens and displays that adorn so many of our pieces of equipment.  If you want to know the time look at the digital display of your fan or printer or microwave or toothbrush or oven or radio or whatever else you have that is connected to an electricity supply.  And most of us do not need to know the time anyway.  What is it that we have to do that requires the temporal precision that LEDs flash at us, down to the last second?

We wear watches because we have always worn watches: from my first Ingersoll to my latest Amazfit, I have owned hundreds (can that be right? Surely not!) of the things and my appetite for them is undiminished.  I already own an Amazfit watch: it is a smartwatch and it measures my steps, my heartbeat, my swim, my bike rides and all sorts of other things that I do not really know how to access.  It sometimes lets me know that I have emails and messages and it has been known to indicate that somebody is trying to phone me.  It has al ‘always on’ screen, a long battery life and I can wear it when I swim.

But today the door bell buzzed (if you see what I mean) and there was a packet for me containing another Amazfit watch, the Amazfit X.  The USP of this particular timepiece is that it does all of the above and it has a curved screen.  At least I thought it did all of the above, but I now realize that it does not have the ‘always on’ screen – one has to tilt one’s wrist towards the eyes and then the long thin (curved) screen jumps into vibrant colour and (momentarily) gives one the time and various activity counters.

So, although it does somewhat less and perhaps a little more (in brighter colours) than my last watch, its USP is sufficient for me to regard it as an authentic gadget and to treat it with the care and attention that all true gadgets deserve and to regard its purchase as a necessary counterbalance to the stolid chunkiness of hoover homeliness.

And I bought myself a new front light for my bike in Aldi.  This is extravagance of a high order.  I have, you will be unsurprised to learn, already got a cheap and cheerful front light for my bike – one of those rubbery plastic things that cost a couple of euros and give a LED flashing light that is sufficient to indicate that you are on the road.  That mere utilitarianism is not enough.

My bike did come with a front light and horn combo that lasted less than a week.  The attempts I made to ‘repair’ the light ended in its destruction, but I couldn’t get rid of it because in some strange way, even though it was useless in the lighting area, it did allow the horn to work.  Neither do I, but that is how it was.  Therefore, the dead light ensured the continued working of the horn and the little rubbery plastic thingamajig ensured my chance of survival on the feral roads of Catalonia.

I did buy a refreshingly expensive rechargeable front light but that went the way of all flesh via a wonky connection.  But why didn’t I get a replacement for a light that lasted less than a week.

My bike is made by MATE bikes, founded in Copenhagen and sold via a start-up campaign on the internet.  As I am a self-confessed sucker for such things, I sucked and sank.

The bike, to be fair, is good.  And I have bought two – which must say something about the product – but even the most cursory glance at Facebook and other internet sites devoted to the owners of MATE bikes will indicate a few fundamental problems.  Customer service was, has been and continues to be awful.  People like me have been waiting YEARS for essential spare parts and we have been fobbed off for YEARS with words and a singular lack of hard equipment.

Until now.  My throttle is on the bike and (I really shouldn’t tempt fate) is working.  The time that a fairly simple part (that should have been delivered at the same time as the bike) has taken to get to me is ridiculous.  But it is here and working, so I put in an order for the replacement light.

The MATE website said that I could ‘pre-order’ the part and that it would be available from the 31^st of October this year.  On my printed receipt it actually suggests that it could be delivered by the 31^st of October.  This year. 

As usual where gadgets are concerned, my optimism is stronger than my realism.  MATE have a month and a bit to either turn me into a hardened cynic or to encourage me to blossom with fellow feeling and contentment.

Which will it be?

 

When is a gadget not a gadget?

It is difficult to work up very much enthusiasm while waiting for the delayed arrival of a new cordless vacuum cleaner.  Admittedly this machine is one purchased some time ago from one of the many start-up companies to whose blandishments I too frequently fall victim, but still as a more domestic version of Gertrude Stein might have said, “A Hoover, is a Hoover, is a Hoover” and, no matter how necessary and useful it might be, it just sucks air – and dust of course.  And furthermore, unlike dear old ‘Moppy’ in the living room, the new purchase actually needs a human to direct it.  Constantly.  So, it consequently does not have the robotic elan of the squat worker downstairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our present Hoover hoover only works properly when the head is at an acute angle to the body of the machine – which suggests to me that there is a wonky contact somewhere inside the thing.  As I have zero intention of removing the ‘do not remove’ panels to get to the electronic workings we have the ‘repair or replacement’ quandary that I have (or rather will have) solved by doing both.  The new machine is somewhere in Catalonia in the back of a van and the old machine will go to the frankly unsatisfactory domestic electricals shop that made such a bad and dishonest attempt to repair my electric shaver.

Why, I hear you ask, if the place was so unsatisfactory, will you return?  And the reply is based on a mixture of good economic sense and touching faith in humanity.  As the old hoover is still technically working, I trust that the rep<air will be something absurdly simple and cheap.  Touching, isn’t it?  And you never know, for once my naivety may be justified and even rewarded!

 

Even though I am typing this outside on the third-floor terrace in shorts and T-shirt, I have to admit that summer is over.  There are ‘rites of passage’ that tell you these things.  The official change of season from Summer to Autumn is when the chiringuitos (the temporary café structures that are built on the actual sand of the beach) begin to be taken down.

It was a sorry sight as I cycled down the length of the paseo is see various heavy-duty machines carting panels, tables and chairs and kitchen equipment back to the waiting lorries on the street.

They are absurdly expensive places and they will be no loss to us as we never use them, but to see them disappear makes the length of the beach look somewhat desolate and gives us fair warning of the colder months ahead.

There is a common misapprehension among my British friends that the seasons as they undergo them in Wales, for example, do not bear any relationship to the lived experience of seaside Catalans and others.  May I reassure them that we do have seasons, the only difference is that we do not usually experience all four of them on a single day!

We have Winter.  Admittedly it is not as cold as in the UK, but we do have recourse to duvets and central heating – though not generally in what the British call their Spring and Summer!

Catalans have firm faith in the calendar: if the date suggests it is autumn or winter, then they dress accordingly and to hell with the information that a thermometer gives.  I, on the other hand, have successfully delayed changing my shorts for jeans throughout an entire year.  This staunch approach to truncated clothing led one of my Catalan friends to say, “When I see your legs, I shiver!”  Which I now realise is capable of having other interpretations than wonderment at my resilience to the cold!

 

In spite of my real misgivings about the determination of the delivery company to get my package to me, SEUR delivered the cordless vacuum cleaner within five minutes of the start of their projected time for a ‘second’ delivery.

The hoover is actually from a Bristol based company and, after being assembled it looks impressive.  The next few days will tell if it is practical and whether it was worth the wait for it to get from a design idea to its physical presence in my home via a start-up platform.  I am trying to be enthusiastic, but hoovers are like fridges: essential but essentially unexciting – you just want them to last so you don’t spend any more on them for the next decade or so!

Roll on more interesting purchases, which I do actually have in the pipeline.  After all, what else is there to do in the restricted times in which we live than indulge in a little light retail therapy!

Nitty-gritty nasty!

 

 

 

DIY in my world has always been self-defence, not self-expression.  Those who can gaze upon an Allen key and dream of technical, self-made, interior design upgrades to their living environment exist in another ‘verse to the one that I inhabit.  Yes, when continuation of the status quo is put in jeopardy I can rise to the occasion and heft an implement of household artisanship not directly related to the kitchen with – maybe, not the best – but certainly with the more satisfyingly mediocre.

So, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I recently assayed the construction of a domestic tower of shelves and drawers which was supposed to replace the “cake-stand-type” fixture that you more regularly see in bathrooms which lurks by the side of my armchair in the living room.

These suspended containers were themselves a reaction to the arrangements that had to be put in place when I returned from my shock stay in hospital after the unexpected diagnosis of my thrombosis and embolisms.  I was told, strictly, and eye-to-eye by a determined doctor that I was to have a month of almost total rest and that I was furthermore to be ministered unto by Toni!

As it is quite impossible to live any sort of modern life (even in a state of “almost total rest”) without the accoutrements of electronic gadgetry about one, there had to be surfaces to hand on which computers, phones, iPads, mobile phones and cups of decaffeinated tea could be placed.

The immediate solution was to purchase a TV table, the ‘home’ form of the hospital table, and that was sufficient for the immediate problems of enforced immobility – but as soon as I could move around a little the implicit invalid associations of the teak-effect plastic began to pall and disconcertingly define as well, so it had to go.

The “cake-stand” alternative always looked as though it would be more at home in the bathroom and so it went too.

There are few things more depressing that the arrival of a heavy flatpack of potential furniture.  The acrimony started before the thing had even been unpacked and its consequent construction was completed in sullen silence and solitary strenuousness.  But it was eventually completed, it stood firm and the drawers fitted: and that, surely is the acme of technical achievement.

Though, put next to that piece of pre-cut, pre-drilled and pre-packaged purgatory, I can now place a finished piece of technical mechanical installation on the handlebars of my electric bike.

My bike is basically a good buy: sourced from one of those pre-production sites asking for seed money for a good idea, I was duly seduced and parted with a quite surprising amount of money to get a stylist, collapsible electric bike.  The one I have at present in the second iteration of the basic design with fatter wheels and a funkier colour.  But it didn’t have a throttle.

One of the disadvantages of the bike is that it is heavy.  On day last week I allowed the battery to run down and was confident that I could use the bike as an ‘ordinary’ cycle with no electric boost at all.  Wrong!  Very, very wrong!  My stylist nippy bike was transformed into one of those instruments of torture that you can find in the more severe sorts of gymnasia where a bloody huge effort is rewarded with bloody little.  I even toyed with the idea of walking the bike back home rather than peddling frantically in first and creeping along the road in a humiliating display of mismatch of effort and achievement that I had not repeated since a churningly inefficient dogpaddle from my distant youth!

So, actually getting the thing moving is sometimes a difficulty.  On my first bike the throttle attachment took care of stopping and starting on inclines, as my frantic attempts to get to first gear when I really needed to usually resulted in a clunking of cog wheels and a crazily haphazard approach to direction.  My ‘superior’ second bike did not come with a throttle as standard, but I rectified that omission by carefully selecting a throttle as an ‘extra’ when I ordered the bike.

I have had the bike for some time, but the throttle has remained stubbornly unavailable.  I have used, my not unimpressive writing skills, to little effect.  The Customer Service of MATE Bikes is notoriously and internationally awful.  The delivery of the part is over TWO YEARS LATE.  And I didn’t add an exclamation mark at the end of that sentence because a single exclamation mark would be pitifully inadequate to express my contempt for the service that I have had, and my self-respect does not allow me to use two or more in my written work.

After the Long Wait for a simple part to get to me, a sudden email informed me that it was on its way.  And they got the address wrong.  Again. 

Now I have to admit that the original mistake was mine.  When I ordered the first bike, I typed the post code number incorrectly and MATE have, in spite of my repeated explanations, failed to rectify the number.  So, my long-awaited part when to another part of Catalonia.

And do not think for a moment that it was easy to get the delivery company to cope with the mistake.  Contacting the company by email, phone and on the web all failed.  I went to the local depot of the company which is a few towns away and was told that my package was in a different ‘region’ of the company and they had no contact with that particular region and, even if they did, the only people who could change the delivery address were the people who sent the package, i.e. MATE Bikes.

The eventual solution was to accept that the package was in a different region.  Ask for it to be sent to a local shop that was used as a sort of pick-up centre and go there.

At least we sent through part of the National Park of Montserrat to get to the small town (that neither of us had heard of before) and had some spectacular views of the otherworldly rock formations to convince us that we had not wasted the best part of a morning going and coming back.

Then I had to fix the throttle to the bike.

In theory it is simple.  MATE even have a series of how-to videos, one of which is ‘Changing the throttle’ – a video that I have watched a number of times.

There were two problems.  The first was that the horn and rear light indicator (I told you it was a more sophisticated version of the original bike) was perched on the handlebar where the throttle should have fitted.  And the second problem was that the truly astonishing writhing mass of leads and wires that are part of the bike are hidden from view in a zipped sleeve which, once unzipped is entirely disinclined to zip up again.

I do not intend to explain how the problems were (and were not) dealt with.  Suffice to say, the throttle is fitted and, the more extraordinary part, it works.  For the moment – and I am OK with short term gains - it is done!

And the technical elements of my engineering were accomplished with four different types of Allen key.  And what an appropriate verb to use!

 

. . . and other thing

  

 

 

A personal blog is somewhat akin to a home: it always has to let you in.  So, the ‘lost time’ since the last entry is forgiven and forgotten and we carry on where we left off.

Well, not quite.  The last entries were numbered, day by day, in relation to the virus that has changed our lives.  Eventually, as one piece of governmental incompetence and mendacity was replaced by culpability even more egregious, I found that there was a certain similarity in my ranting and, eventually, even I grew a little weary with my impotent rage.

So, where are we now?  In my native land and in my adopted one, there is a depressing similarity in the progress of the response to the virus.  We are now in the Second Wave or Second Spike, and the preventative messaging to a bemused population is just as confused and self-evidently self-contradictory as to make any informed response for survival aleatory, to say the least.  Never has the age-old adage of “To thine own self be distanced, hand washed and masked” been so apposite.  Given the number of mask-less machos and viral assassins (or children, as they are sometimes known) plaguing our public spaces the only reasonable assumption to make is that everyone is out to get you, and that means you have to take the precautions that they seem unable or unwilling to embrace.

It is a constant source of support for me that my partner is compellingly paranoid about Covid and is ever on hand to reinforce my sometimes-casual approach to the liberal application of alcohol sanitizer - which has now replaced as the holy water stoop as a reflex ‘saving’ ritual in public places.

Restrictions come and go, but they seem to have little effect in our general lives.  As most people are generally unsure about what the precise regulations are at any specific time, it is hardly surprising that the approach of most is casually approximate.  I would say that mask wearing is generally accepted in urban areas, although smokers are allowed to flout the rules to indulge their filthy habit.  Bike riders, electric scooter users and skateboarders seem to assume that they are exempt, as do many walkers on the paseo by the beach and virtually all joggers.

The rule of 6 is generally accepted, but restaurants and shops seem to call that rule into question.  The Liceu is due to start its programme of Operas on United Nations Day and, while I have read through their protocols for the safety of patrons, I do wonder about the practical application of rules for the numbers involved.  Still, my first opera is a month away and the potent combination of politics and pandemic has meant that a day is a ‘long time’ in our present existence, let alone a week – so who knows what the situation will be like in another thirty days or so!

Our daily routine is fairly unbroken: we exercise, shop and go out for meals.  True, there is no ‘turn up and swim’ option, so I have to book my place in the pool each day; we wear masks every time we go out (even to and from the beach); sanitizer and plastic gloves are necessary in shops, and I take my own pepper grinder with me when we eat out as shared cruets are a thing of the past, all condiments are in sachets, but our daily life goes on.

I know (and I really do appreciate) that my proximity to the sea is a godsend.  Not only does the paseo give me a long (and level!) expanse for accommodating cycling, but it also allows me to see the horizon, to see out.  I think of those, and there are many, who live in cramped urban flats (sometimes with viral assassins in their living space!) and I wonder how they survive mentally intact with the inevitable physical and psychological claustrophobia that living in small spaces with the wider threat of infection must force on them.  I am lucky that I have an open, healthy release from the encircling encroachment of the Virus.

But the sense of being ‘surrounded’ with a resourceful enemy probing to find the gap in the waggon train circle to kill you does have, if you will excuse the pun, a deadening effect on creativity.  For the last fortnight, for example, my swimming pool has been closed for annual maintenance so I have been denied my early morning swim.  Although in past years during this stop fortnight I have gone to the public pool in the next town, I did not feel inclined to chance my arm (and the rest of my being) to an administration that I do not know and so I have relied just on my cycle ride to provide the exercise that I need.  And what use have I made of the extra time gained from not swimming?  Have I gone through my notebooks and worked up the ideas that I write down each day?  I have not.  Instead, I have indulged myself with what can only be described as a ghoulish intensity of Guardian reading, lurching from Trump to Johnson to Brexit to Covid – appalled but unable to stop myself descending further and further into the depths of despond with every sentence.

Into the gloom, however, comes John Crace – the Guardian political sketch writer.  John is quite open about his own mental insecurity and yet the humour and biting wit that he uses to flay the idiocy of our leaders is life-givingly refreshing and mentally rejuvenating!  I hope it works for him too. 

One letter writer in the Guardian suggested that everyone deserves a holiday of some sort to mitigate the effects of the virus – except for John Crace: his writing is too important for the well-being of the rest of us for him to be allowed to stop! 

John has now reached the level once held by the cartoonist Giles, where the work is necessary for the benefit of all, and his writing should be part of our National Health System!

Tomorrow, the pool reopens after whatever it is that they do for fourteen days and so things will be back to what we like to call the New Normal again.  I have begun to think about what Christmas is going to look like this year – that is going to give the New Normal a particular twist, or perhaps I should have said peculiar.  Indeed, the New Peculiar seems to me to be a far better description of what we are now living.

Bring on tomorrow!