Happy Christmas?

 

 

Today marks the real institutionalisation of the pandemic.  I had to show my Covid Certificate or Passport to get into the swimming pool.

     There was the usual failure of the technology when it turned out that the image of my scrambled digital thingy on my mobile phone (you can tell that I have forgotten what they are called) was too small to be read by the mobile phone app that was being used to check entry.  For some reason the phone did not allow me to expand the image to make things easier for the desk staff, but eventually I was allowed in.

     Last night on the television there was a piece on the long lines of people in the centre of Barcelona who had just realized that their access to bars, restaurants and gyms was going to be ended if they could not produce a valid covid certificate, and so they were desperately queuing to get their jabs.  I suppose that one should think, “Better late than never”, but one can’t quite rid oneself of the bone deep irritation that one feels when thinking about the sheer inconsideration of people who can’t give a hoot for the general good until it impacts on them directly.

     In the armed forces, I remember reading from years ago (and had it confirmed by my Dad) if you suffered from sun burn, it was considered an offence as the ‘injury’ was ‘self-inflicted’.  I feel very much the same from those people now clogging up precious hospital beds, where the vast majority of Covid patients in ICUs are unvaccinated!

     I don’t remember the same degree of vaccine avoidance about other fatal diseases and feel that the political edge given to Covid vaccine reluctance is one left over from the disastrous ‘presidency’ of Trump. 

     His macho idiocy and cavalier attitude towards disease prevention is directly responsible for deaths.  For anyone else you would ask yourself how the hell he manages to sleep at night knowing the damage he has done to families and to institutions – but with such a sociopathic narcissist like himself, where he is the centre of his own sick universe, he is able to redefine responsibility and ignore so-called collateral damage.

     In Catalonia, I take the requirement to show that you are vaccinated to be a clear sign that our government is taking things seriously. 

     Yes, there are contradictions contained in what we understand to be the new rules for socialising and, as things stand at the moment, I will be able to go to my next opera in the Liceu with almost full capacity.  I assume that we will be asked to show a Covid certificate for entry there too, but I have yet to be informed by the House, and the performance is only a week or so away.

     I do understand that, as a retired person, I can afford to take a fairly purist attitude towards restrictions: I do not have to commute, my financial wellbeing is not connected (directly) to the health of any one firm or place of work in the UK, I can afford to be complacent, in so far as my pension is from the government and not from any public company.  Yes, the ability of governments to pay their pensioners is directly dependent on the wealth of the country providing them, and the restrictions on people being able to work has lessened the tax money that the government can spend, but we are still protected in a more direct way than a self-employed actor, or waiter, or salesperson.

     Christmas is the time when some industries make a chunk of their earnings: the Panto season in theatres is essential to the health of the theatre for the coming year; restaurants look to party bookings during this period as a guaranteed source of income to see them through the leaner times in the year.  All computation about what will and will not happen financially has been thrown into disarray by the pandemic.  Nothing is certain.  Rules change on a weekly basis.  Long term confidence is something of a dream.

     Those lucky enough to be on a combination of full, state, and professional pensions are assured of a fixed payment each month.  For the majority of the working population the pandemic has shown how privileged this financial state is as what previously had been thought to be guaranteed proved itself to be not as firmly grounded as hoped.

     I do understand that keeping the economy going is of essential importance, pensions are, after all, paid by the contributions of those still working – but there is also the question of the health and safety of the nation to be taken into consideration too.

     In the UK at the moment, there are wildly differing approaches depending on who you listen to in Government about what you can consider doing this Christmas.  John Crace (the Guardian Political Sketch Writer, and well worth reading) is fond of using the image of Schrodinger’s Cat to illustrate some of the contradictory attitude of government.  Johnson seems to have abdicated responsibility for giving clear advice about what to do this Christmas apart from saying that Christmas Parties should not be cancelled, but he still harps on about personal responsibility where what he is doing is off-loading the burden of accountability on to some sort of mythical inner logician that we all have inside us, that will allow him to claim that any increase in deaths because of faulty precautions taken will be the responsibility of those who die and not the person who has the title of Prime Minister and who should be leading us.

     The corruption, lies, deaths, incompetence, bullying, hypocrisy, and cowardice of this twelve-year-old government makes the “Thirteen years of Tory misrule” proclaimed by Wilson in 1964 look positively prim by comparison!

     Here in Catalonia, we have a government where the equivalent of the Conservatives has little power, but there is a limit to what can be done when the parties we do have are squabbling amongst themselves and hardly living up to the names of the political sections they are supposed to represent.

     Politics seems to be becoming murkier by the month and adds nothing to the confidence with which we can look forward to Christmas and the next year.

     I fear that the imposition of Covid passports is just a step in the process of softening us up to accept far more stringent restrictions when the full import of the growth of the Omicron variant is clear.

     “Happy Christmas” is a fond hope, not a greeting.

Decisions!

 

Having finally found somewhere reasonable to have our Christmas Meal, the conversation and concern has now veered towards the advisability of taking up the reservation and actually turning up there.

     The description of the inexorable international advance of the Omicron Variant, and more especially the way in which the disturbing news is being treated in a frighteningly reasonable way, are true causes for concern.

 

      

 

     Taking the Johnsonian and ‘10’-idian approach as being ipso facto wrong because it is emanating from such laughably untrustworthy sources, we can assume that the ‘Christmas as normal’ advice is profoundly and totally unacceptable.  It therefore leaves reasonable people (i.e., those that didn’t vote for Brexit or the bloody Conservatives) debating the choices.

     And what the choices are for Christmas, are by no means clear.

     At one end of the operational scale there is the lockdown.  A reversion to the restricted days of only emerging from house isolation for essential shopping.  Or some version of ‘lockdown lite’ where there is freer movement, but the meeting of anyone outside your bubble is to be frowned on.

     The Christmas Meal will involve extended family and close family: parents, aunts, cousins, and their children.  But this will be in a setting where there are others from outside this tight little group in the Functions Hall of a restaurant.

     Even with The Family we do not have a day-to-day physical proximity.  All the adults have been (at least) double jabbed, but there are kids, some of whom are under the age of ten, and therefore presumably not injected.  What does vaccine safety mean in those circumstances?

     There are also the festivities of Christmas Eve (in Catalonia the traditional time to give out presents) and the traditional lunch of St Stephen’s Day, during which I expect to receive presents for my Name Day!  No plans for either of these days has yet been shared with me, so what will happen then is just up to my lurid imagination!

     The more the authorities do not give us anything like the full picture of what is actually going on in the world of the pandemic, the more I feel that we have to take pro-active steps to protect ourselves from what is probably happening that they are not telling us about.

     But most of me believes that what will actually happen for the festive season is that we will speculate away before, during and after the event – and only with hindsight will we know if our masterly inaction was justified!

 

 

I have taken the first step in junking my socialist principles, by looking at a list of sites on the web that offer a consultation with a specialist for about 50€.  I have worked out that I cannot reasonably wait about a year for a consultation and then another year before anything is done.  With the way things are going that would mean that I would have to camp out under the house to avoid having to go up and down stairs all the time.  This is something I am not going to do.

     I have discovered that the ‘telephone consultation’ with my doctor that follows my recent blood test was not within a couple of days as I had thought when I was told that that the call would be on the 16th, but rather yes, the 16th, but of the next month.  As I waited a week or so for the call to be made before going to the health centre to find out why it hadn’t happened, the gap between my first expectation and reality is considerably narrower, and I have to wait only two further weeks for it to occur.

     I am going to have to try and find out what, reasonably, I can expect from the Health System and then work with what I have to find a solution that is physically acceptable.

     Just to put things into some sort of perspective, I was speaking with a friend this morning who had had liver cancer and who had treatment not only here in Barcelona but also in America.  The treatment in America cost 44k dollars.  OK, the treatment was cutting edge and for cancer, whereas my operations will be orthopaedic, with more carpentry than anything else about them.  But such a sum gives one pause for thought.  And encourages an acceptable pause in treatment if it means that it can be done on the national health of Catalonia!

     But I am flailing about in the financial unknown dark at the moment as I have no certain knowledge of what exactly is wrong with my knees, and secondly what exactly will have to be done in order to make them more acceptable.  I have few illusions about them being transformed into good-as-new, but I will settle for less painful.

     One thing I do know is that I will have to lose weight.  This has been a perennial cry for medics and one that I will have to take incredibly seriously from now on.  Which is depressing.

     I have recently discovered (or should that be re-discovered) a book for recipes for diabetics.  This could be a double advantage find, as it offers not only good wholesome recipes of limited calories, but also as it is written in Spanish, it can only aid and succour my present attempts to learn the language.  Again.

 

In spite of my distain for the wiles of electronic apps in drawing you in, I have become infected by Toni’s paranoia about where in the league you end up at the termination of the number of days it lasts.

     Toni has managed to be first in each of the leagues in which he has been placed, while I have won one (you see, I used the word ‘won’ as if my language course was some sort of competition!) and been placed in the ‘Top 3’ in two others and finished in the promotion area in the rest.

     Toni is thousands of points (literally) ahead of his presumptuous challenger in second place, whereas in my league the leaders are more equitably spaced so that there is a certain amount of jostling for the top three places.  At the moment I am placed second, but with learners 3 and 4 within double figures places of me.  All is to play (see, I’m using exactly the language the app wants me to use) for – with three days to go before the competitors in the Sapphire League see whether they have made it into the Ruby League!

     As time goes on the league in which you find yourself is more and more likely to be composed of people who have made a concerted effort to be promoted (demotion is also a possibility if your work rate slows) so the pressure on you to strive is more and more pronounced.  Even as I am sucked in, I can take a moment to admire the automated structure that electronically pushes my buttons!

 

T

 

 

Talking of pushing buttons, I must give a call out to the animated series on Netflix, Arcane.  The nine episodes so far have been gripping.  This is high quality animation with artwork of cinematographic sophistication.

     The narrative is apparently backstory and origins of characters in some sort of arcade (are they still called that?) game of which, of course, I had not heard.

     Although the conflicts that animate the narrative are tried and tested: magic/science; rich/poor; privilege/powerlessness; strength/weakness; morality/practicality; law/lawlessness; drugs/sobriety; politics/truth; war/peace; etc etc the progress of the story line uses strong characterisation and allows individuals to develop within a taut narrative.

     Well worth watching.

 

 

Write on!

 

 

How easy it is to let a few days slip by without putting finger to keyboard!

     As a person who actually enjoys writing, there must be something deeply sinister in an attitude that will wilfully lapse into indolence rather than do something that he enjoys.  Obviously, there are excuses, the first and foremost being courtesy.

     This weekend we had an old friend to stay, and we dutifully and willingly ate (and drank very little, sigh!) with her until she left on the train for the bus for home.  And we talked.

     There is something about talking with a friend that is intoxicating.  Everything, even the stupidest of small talk becomes imbued with significance when there is history to make even the most casual of comments chime with conversations past.

     It is as this point that I recollect a colleague who had had a fascinating life: world travel, a variety of jobs including working in an Adult Book Store, an easy and friendly approach – and yet his conversation, even (or especially) when talking about overtly interesting things, was boring in the extreme.  He was one of those people who, for reasons not entirely clear, drained interest from the content of his talk.

     I often tried to analyse just what it was that made him so oddly boring but, alas, I rarely found myself concentrating enough on what he was saying to give myself enough evidence to draw conclusions!

     And yet, I have had conversations, even whole evenings, of inconsequential chatter that was forgotten almost as soon as the evening was over, but whose warm memory of friendship and communality lingers longer.

     Is all of the preceding an extended excuse of inaction?  Probably.  And in justification, I am writing now.

 

 

 

 

Duolingo, the languages teaching app, is still exerting its siren-like grip over Toni and myself.  We have, wholeheartedly, bought into the idea, nay the concept, of progression “to the next league” as something which is self-evidently availing to good, even though our present position commanding the heights of our respective The Sapphire Leagues has brought us nothing apart from a number next to our names: the first three places on the list having a more elaborate number decoration than those lower down.

     As with any system, part of the learning process is working out how to play that system.

     The whole motivating process of the learning on this app is fuelled by the acquisition of points that give you your place on the list. 

     The points can be earned by successfully completing lessons and, as you progress within a lesson group you can gain crowns to show your position within that topic.  As you move from one level to another, you are given the opportunity (for 15 minutes) to gain double points for any lessons that you complete.  You can also buy your way into high paying (in points terms) exercises by using up some of your gems that you also earn as you progress.

     Some people manage to accrue thousands of points, and as the usual pay-out for a lesson completed is about 20ish, you either have to devote yourself all day to using the app or, you pay to buy the professional version of the app which gives you unlimited lives and free opportunities to the higher scoring exercises.

     If you have read up to this point, then you are either a devotee of Duolingo or you are an ‘outsider’ waiting to see what the pay-off of all this writing is.

 

 

 

If there is a conclusion that I can draw from all this, it is that the app is using tried and tested approaches to involve the user in the program in the hope that they either watch and respond to the adverts that litter the before and after of the lessons, but also feel frustration about the ‘free’ version because it is too limiting.  I can feel myself becoming more and more drawn to paying money for this ostensible ‘free’ app because I want to get rid of the adverts and I want to be able to make simple errors without losing a precious life.

     The app has encouraged me to do more work on my Spanish for a longer sustained period of time than mere physical lessons with a teacher have ever managed to get out of me!  In that sense, the ever-present phone and the easily reached app are providing a positive boost to my learning.

     And learning a foreign language, any foreign language, must be a good thing.

     But, exactly the same techniques with lives, points, hearts, animations, questions and responses, musical accompaniment, leagues, positions, congratulations etc etc etc can be used for much more pernicious reasons.

     Toni and I are working at our respective language courses for a chunk of time and are putting ourselves out for a position in a randomly constructed hierarchy of attainment, and we feel gratified by our placement within that arbitrary ranking.  We take the automatically generated congratulations and animated celebrations at our successes as something real and something to stimulate us to continue and to progress.

     We are gaining knowledge, and anything that gives me the impetus to make an effort has to be a good thing.  But it does make me look at the way that advertising is presented, and the same techniques are used in game playing and I’m sure in gambling.

     Just because you can sense that you are being manipulated, that does not protect you from manipulation.  In the Duolingo app I welcome the encouragement to participate and to progress and I am willing to accept the digital ‘payment’ the app supplies as something real to keep me at it.

     Even if I succumb and pay the monthly rate to upgrade my experience, I can still tell myself that it is a small price to pay to speak the language by which I am surrounded.

     And I am far to digital savvy to be seduced by tempting pixels.  Aren’t I?

     When I started typing this, I was First in my League.  I am fighting the temptation to check on my position now to find out if I need to a bit of emergency lessoning to restore my pre-eminence.

     In fact, I can’t check immediately, because my phone is downstairs recharging after all the use that I have made of it today.  But I do want to check!

     The app is working!