The way it goes

Over the weekend the wind blew lots of branches off our fig trees and uprooted a two metre high aloe vera plant that I've never much cared for. It took me three trips with the wheelbarrow to haul the remains away. At least the wind means that it's not quite as cold.

When we first bought the house one of the few good things about it was the tree lined drive. We still have the trees despite the sport practised by so many visiting vans and lorries of reversing in to them - usually serially. In fact, rather as you would expect, they are somewhat taller now than when we first moved in. I was listening to the two big pointy ones nearest the house creaking in the wind. Culebrón, like Skegness, can be bracing.  The tree alongside the house is at least 10 metres tall, a plumber warned us against it. Roots under the house, blocking up the drains, he threatened. The tree a bit further away, possibly a larch, is even taller and heavier. They probably won't blow over but they might. I can imagine the interrogation from the insurers about our tree care regime.

I suppose of more immediate concern is the virus. A very pleasant chap who worked in one of the offices in the town hall in Pinoso, a bloke in his early fifties, died of it the other day, in some ways his was a more public death than the others in our little town. Our municipal cases per 100,000 figure stands at around 1,300. 

Spain's health service, like those in so many in other countries, is creaking as much as our trees. Every day on the TV and radio there is a procession of medics saying how the hospitals are at breaking point. It's as repetitive as the pictures of police breaking up some after hours party with an apparently incredulous newsreader pointing out that the young people involved were not wearing masks and not keeping apart. The measures to try and keep people from spreading the virus keep changing and tightening as much as they can given the rules of the current State of Emergency. Here in Valencia all the bigger towns and cities will be sealed off each weekend and all bars and restaurants are now closed. Ours were some of the last to go. At home the rules say that you cannot have visitors and out in the street only two people can get together unless they are cohabitees. I presume that means that the Ladybird Book family of mum, dad, daughter and son can go out for a walk together but, if they meet Uncle Billy, then only dad, or mum, or daughter, or son can go to greet him. Then again it may be that the cohabiting group counts as one person. Not that the detail matters much unless you want to have an academic argument and maintain that the virus is a hoax, that the figures are distortions, that it's all a terrible attack on our civil liberties, that the constitution guarantees freedom of movement and that you're not going to put up with a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. Otherwise, keeping yourself to yourself as much as possible seems a remarkably sensible thing to do.

As you probably know I like going to the pictures and, amazingly, the cinemas are still able to open. Lots of them have closed because they have no audience, same with the theatres, but they can, legally, stay open. I presume that's because not a single outbreak has been linked to them. Again, not that surprising as the audiences are tiny. We went to the pictures on Sunday. The shopping centre where the cinema is was locked shut. We had to ask a security guard to find the one remaining open entrance. A completely deserted shopping centre is a surprisingly eerie place. Sepulchral comes to mind as an adjective to describe something there but I couldn't think of a good way to use it.