I had another dream that I was with the actor Oliver Reed. I am not sure what we were up to but he was sobre and quite charming but I got the feeling he might kick off at any moment. He seemed quite humane and chatty but also philosophical. I hope he is not my spirit animal. 

QUARANTINE DREAMS

WARNING. IF YOU ARE OF A SENSITIVE NATURE YOU'D BETTER LOOK AWAY. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT I AINT NORMAL and am having more weird dreams. I have had them before but they are getting more intense. I am asleep but aware of beings around me. They are not bad just a bit strange. I can't quite identify them. Sometimes they appear to tuck me in. I can feel them. Physically and spiritually. Ocassionally one of them gets a bit over zealous and wants me to join them. I put up a fight. It takes all my strength to plead with this one to tell them to leave me alone. I feel I am being wrenched fom my body before my time. At the same time it would be very easy to go but I feel I am not quiet ready yet and find myself calling out for earthly help. It really is quiet anoying and draining. I wish they would just fuck off and leave me be. 

I am reminiscing. One of our first dates many moons ago. When we were young. We went to Presto, an Italian pasta place in Soho London. It's no longer there and I have no photos but believe me it was one of those wonderful cheap eatery places in London similar to the Polo Bar in Old Compton Street, and many other Italian cafes and restaurants, 'a peculiarly British tradition', according to the writer Joseph Conrad. All formica tabletops and affordable grub with that orange hue that threatens to come back in fashion, you watch. Mr van de Ven was in love and to tell me in that moment of awkwardness he said he thought I was very pretty. Instead of accepting the compliment I asked, 'so you are saying I'm ugly'. He was confused and later told me that he really thought I was pretty but my warped sense of incomprehension and lack of indulgence made him love me even more.

I write for myself. I take photos for myself. I'm quite selfish like that. It amazes me people are even remotely interested in what I say or see!! 

QUARANTEEN

It's been almost two weeks we have been in quaranteen in Spain. We can't go to the parks like people can in the UK and we are all finding this difficult here. We can go to the shop but just for essentials. It's not a good thing to go every day and is discouraged. I finally have my classes up and running and although there are some glitches I feel better about this life change now. It was very difficult being thrown into this but I am grateful I can keep on working although I would have no problem adjusting and taking on a job in a supermarket or cleaning or whatever I would have to do to get by. I don't mind doing a job that doesn't pay so long as they feed me and let me sleep somewhere warm! 

YOU THINK YOU KNOW SOMEONE...

You think you know someone ( husband) and then you find out they once worked in animal quarantine.

CORONAVIRUS SPAIN

So much is going on and I have to try and write it down before it all escapes me. Yesterday there was a piece in the El Pais that the army had discovered elderly people dead or dying in care homes and the careworkers had appeared to have abandoned them. The defense minister said the full weight of the law would come down on these people if it was found to be true. Then I saw the BBC do a report on this and they repeated parrot fashion what they had heard. Today it is starting to appear that these elderly people are in homes where most of the staff have fallen ill to the coronavirus leaving the homes stretched to the limit.They are often run by nuns who are elderly too. One of the nuns has since died. The director of one of the homes has appealed to the army to help. The army have gone in to disinfect the places and found the dead. On top of this the coroner, the funeral director and so on have to put on protective suits and masks when they collect the body of the deceased. Many of the care workers didn't have the best protective clothing etc, so it is no wonder they got ill. It is possible that fear made some of them abandon their posts. There is also a strict protocol that prohibits workers from  touching bodies. More of this story will come out but I didn't like the way it was reported by the BBC. It made it look like the careworkers didn't care and I am sure this is not true.

I haven't wriiten much lately. Mainly because I have been weighed down by a feeling that can only be described as waiting for a hurricane to hit us.

Wow Facebook really doesn't know me. Or I have, being impervious to everything, really fucked them up. Gone are the adverts for Royal Ulster paraphernalia, the Stenner stairlifts and far right rallies. Now they expect me to be interested in baking bread, spells, and feckin' yoga!

Some of you may have seen the Dutch health minister collapse from exhaustion while speaking in the parliament the other day. He was later told, just like in the films, to go home and take some rest, but this is real life and he said he would resign as the country needed someone who was capable of doing this job and he didn't feel he was. What did the Dutch coalition cabinet do now that they had no health minister? They chose a politician from an opposition party, in this case the Labour Party who do not form part of the coalition. During a press conference the Dutch PM was being questioned on the usual, what did he think about what so and so said etc etc, when he turned round to a journalist and basically said, 'no, no, no, this is not a time for normal politics'. He is right it isn't and I hope to see more of this pragmatic attitude. There is no time for wind up or bullshit merchants right now. We really are all in this together. 

I have had horrible nightmares lately due to stress but the other night I had a dream that still haunts me. I was asleep, but also asleep in the dream, when you fear you are going to have to wake up twice and hovering over me was a friend ( you know who you are!) dressed as some sort of physician, very old fashioned with what looked like arm bands on his sleeves. He said something like, 'well you know what this is all about don't you?' I said I didn't and asked where I was. He told me that I was in a game show and said it was called something on a par with, 'Guess Which Celebrity You Are Going To Wake Up Next To? and explained that there was a famous person next to me under a sheet and I had to reveal who it was. Next to me was a figure hidden by what looked like the Turin Shroud. Reluctantly I pulled back said sheet to uncover I had been sleeping next to none other than Herve Villachaize that fuckin midget from Fantasy Island AKA Tatoo dressed as an admiral. He looked at me with eyes a bit too gleeful and said, 'surprise!' That will teach me for reading Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain before I try to go to sleep.

Spain calling. Mr van de Ven and I are still here despite it all. Our eclectic ancestors survived a famine, wars, a pogrom, Nazis and much more which helped us be where we are today which is here and we are not prepared to fall off our perches yet!

THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG....

I have a horrible deep fear that the UK is turning a blind eye and that Prime Minister Johnson never expected he would have to deal with something so worrying. Brexit is out of the window. No one cares anymore. What a privilege that has been.

I am not ashamed to say that on Friday and yesterday I was in a state of shock when the Spanish government said it was issuing a state of emergency.

THINNING OUT THE HERD?

When Italy declared they were going to close down the country lots of people panicked and got on trains to get to other parts of Italy mainly to be with their families or out of fear the virus was coming to get them. Here in Spain a state of alarm was announced yesterday and many felt sick to their stomachs but immediately started to be practical, sorting out how they would be able to work, who was going to look after the kids and so on. What did lots of people from Madrid who have second homes along the costas or up in a pretty village in the Pyrenees or as far away as Galica do? They got in their cars, jumped on trains and buses to get to said second home. On the train to Murcia an elderly man, late eighties, who had been told to go home by doctors in Madrid and isolate thought they must have meant his second home in Murcia. He got there did a bit of supermarket shopping with his wife and is now in intensive care in a hospital. His wife, like everyone else is now at home but alone. The mayor made it quite clear what he thinks of this and has decided to close everything except chemist's and food shops. Apparently there have been bus loads of people turning up asking what touristy things are on offer thinking the state of alarm is just a holiday. We are all going to get this virus whether we like it or not, but the thing is, and the Italians and Chinese have both said the same, we don't want to all get it at the same time and we don't want to give it to doctors, nurses, the cleaners and so on. You know, the people who will do their best to help us stay alive and herd immunity or not, we want our doctors and nurses to be as healthy as possible to do their job of looking after and curing us. On top of this if you have an accident or stroke and get to the hospital but it's full of people on life support because they all have pneumonia, the medics will have to decide who to treat. Common sense people! If you feel ill stay at home and if you get really sick, meaning pneumonia go to the hospital, where hopefully they will be able to give their all to help you and just hope it's not full of reckless dickheads. 

So the bog roll hoarding has started in Spain. For the love of God what do you think that thing that has been sitting in your bathroom for the last three decades is for? You know, the bidet, the thing everyone keeps 'stuff' in, like rubber gloves, magazines, bathroom scales etc etc depending on your perversion!!

Serious question. How do British people think they are going to circumnavigate the lack of freedom of movement within Europe. Why is it that British people think they can still turn up in a European country and live and work but this freedom ends for anyone coming to the UK?

What is it about the Brexiters, the people who voted to leave the European Union who think that they will still be able to live and work in the rest of Europe because and I quote from a million voices, that, 'we were able to go and live in Europe way before the EU came about'. What is it about freedom of movement that they don't understand? That closing the borders works both ways and no, you won't be able to just turn up in Spain and get a job or get residency just as foreigners will be unable to just turn up in the UK to do the same. There is a cut off point and any British person who seriously thinks they can just rock up and be a resident in another European country is seriously uneducated, deluded or both. There will be no preferential treatment for you either.