Falls.

When my alarm rang this morning I got out of bed, opened the curtains, saw the rain coming down, closed the window and got back into bed to watch the rain. Yesterday I got up and did my usual run along the Donkey Line, one of our local bridle paths, and came back rather mud-splattered. And that was before yesterday’s rain got going properly. The prospect of even more mud, and rain still falling, put me off this morning. 

On Monday mornings, as I have explained before now, I get up at the crack of dawn to drive to my daughter’s house. Every time, almost without fail, I see early morning joggers. Usually they are running on the road. Now, I have seen the pavements that they don’t run on and they are in an appalling state. So I can quite understand that running in the road is a less dangerous option than running on the pavement with the risk of falling into the road after turning your ankle on the bad pavement surface. 

All the same, running in the dark in the rain at 6.00 in the morning smacks of obsession. I have lots of admiration for them but this jogger/blogger is not joining in that game. Besides, I am in the privileged position of being able to run later in the day if I so choose. 

 So, anyway, I stayed in bed a little longer, got up and did some indoor exercises and then had a leisurely breakfast, starting to read a new book as I did so. This is “Transition” by Iain Banks. In his prologue he describes a period of time as “that golden age which nobody noticed at the time, I mean the long decade between the fall of the Wall and the fall of the Towers”. He goes on to clarify a little: “One event symbolised the lifted threat of worldwide nuclear holocaust, something which had been hanging over humanity for nearly forty years, and so ended an age of idiocy. The other ushered in a new one.” 

Sometimes writers manage to express what you feel with some accuracy. I suppose that’s why they are successful writers. 

Mr Banks also talks about “the third Fall, the fall of Wall Street and the City, the fall of the banks, the fall of the Markets, beginning on September 15th, 2008”. We are still feeling the effects of the last two “falls” he talks about. 

Whenever I go into our local town centre and see Muslim women covered head to toe, I know it’s one of the effects of the fall of the Two Towers. As is the fact that I have to go through the rigmarole of putting liquids in a little plastic bag to show in the airport whenever I travel. 

And then the effects of the fall of the banks are all around us, both here and in our other home in Spain: closed shops – many replaced by loan shops or the suddenly ubiquitous “We Buy Your Gold”/ “Compro Oro” shops – rising unemployment and in Spain demonstrators on the streets. 

Which brings me to an Asturian actor by the name of Arturo Fernández. He featured in La Voz de Galica because of his comments in a TV chat show called “El Gato al Agua”. Talking about demonstrators he said, “Cuando se sale a la calle, se sale con gente guapa. En las manifestaciones... yo en mi vida he visto gente tan fea, ..., ¡pero cómo es posible! A estos no los veo por la calle, deben de tenerlos en campos de concentración, porque no lo puedo entender.” Loosely translated: “When you go out on the street, you go out with good looking people. In demonstrations ... I have never seen such ugly people in my life, ..., how can that be possible! I don’t see those people on the street, they must keep them in concentration camps, because I don’t understand it.” 

He claimed to be concerned about the image of Spain given to foreigners who see the demonstrators on TV reports. His concern was not about violence or about the rights and wrongs of their politics but, quite simply, the appearance of the demonstrators. All demonstrators should be young and beautiful perhaps? Apparently the audience were open-mouthed (with surprise? horror? who knows) and his fellow guests falling about laughing. 

Not very politically correct Mr Fernández!