And keep the change for yourself

Spain is bespattered with Chinos, Chinese owned shops. There are two principal types. One is like the old British corner shop where the family work all the time. It opens late, it sells sweets, pop and stuff plus basic food and all sorts of things that seem a bit out of place - piles of flip flops in over brittle and discoloured plastic bags piled on top of the crisp boxes. Here in Pinoso we don't have one of those. Our 24 hour shop, or it may be shops, are Spanish run. 

We do have two Chinos though; ours are the sort that sell everything except food. There are tools, cleaning products, stationery, earphones, phone cases, reading glasses, clothing, cleaning products, photo frames, light bulbs, pet supplies and a trillion other things. We Brits love them. We can hunt around the shelves looking for whatever it is rather than having to mime and splutter to, for instance, the person behind the haberdashery shop counter, "Err, I don't know how to say knicker elastic in Spanish." The two Chinese shops in Pinoso are awash with Britons though they're popular with the locals too.

The Chinos were the first places to close when the pandemic hit. I think there was a fear amongst the Chinese community that there would be some sort of racist backlash - the sort of knee-jerk stupidity beloved of the incoherent Donny Trump. When we moved phase here, when the stranglehold of quarantine started to be relaxed, the shops started to re-open. One of the Chinese shops couldn't because it's bigger than 400 square metres and the regulations said "no" to big shops. The other could though. I couldn't avoid the temptation as I passed on the first day it re-opened and I came away grinning with my haul of paint brushes, hosepipe connectors, car shampoo and whatnot. I hear that the bigger Chinese shop has now re-opened but that it's on a sort of ask at the door process. I've scratched my own itch so I've not been in. I have been to a bookshop though, and an ironmongers and the cold meat and olive stalls in the market. Spreading my paltry wealth around.

It's been good to see the "non essential" shops opening up again. It seems to be much more a hopeful sign of the return to normality, of fewer people dying, of politicians calling each other terrorists and coup plotters, than being able to go for a stroll or do a bit of exercise close to home for a limited period in a delimited time. To tell the truth, with being able to travel in province again, we made an appointment and went down to Torrellano to look at second hand cars. Whilst we were there we went to a bar with a view over the Med. It wasn't the first bar we've been to since the confinement began to ease - the machine coffee and the ice cold beer were great but, even better, it felt just like any old day in Spain for a while.

In general things seem to be getting back on track. This morning I had to get up early to take Maggie to her hairdresser who works a little outside Pinoso. Maggie told me that the appointment queue for the haircutter had been a long one as people made up for weeks of folicular fecundity. I know that my mum, in the UK, is really anxious to get her first professional shampoo and set after weeks of staying at home.

Who knows we may still get a fiesta or a concert or something this year.

Chores

I'm a bit of a list maker. Any job has a validity all of its own. Watching a TV programme, blowing up the bike tyres or even having a beer can all be jobs. So, for instance, completing my tax return or looking through the new book of photos that I've just bought have a similar status. In reality, I suppose, the tax return is probably more pressing but the new book gave me a photo for the blog! The mummified nuns were dug up in Barcelona at the start of the Civil War. One in the eye for the Church.

So, for eight weeks lots of the limiting, delimiting, factors went away. You can't paint a wall if you have no paint and the shops are shut. You can't not be able to do something because it's time to go to the theatre when there is no theatre. This week though the world regained some of its normality. Watching the scenes on the telly of people getting together I tend to think that we may have a bit of a rebound to the killing fields but, by then, the Government will have lost the vote on centralised control and it could all be quite interesting. Like having one of those credit cards in the 1990s living in the countryside has its privileges.

Anyway, Maggie is back at work. Just her usual part time slot from 10 till 2 and I'm driving her in and then coming home. It's amazing how those time limits have played havoc with my ability to complete essential jobs like reading a book, weeding the garden or writing a blog.

Well that's one off the list at least.

Longer than the time in the desert

I've been thinking about the changes that happen slowly. I'm not talking about the sort of time needed to form the Himalayas or even the period of time that the Chauvet Cave was active. I'm thinking about how Marlon Brando, Dan Aykroyd, William Shatner and Alec Baldwin became so much bigger. Really I'm thinking about seven, going on eight weeks. I'm thinking about why so many people were champing at the bit to get to a haircut when the hairdressers re-opened yesterday. I suppose all those weeks is a big slice of the year.

I was doing reasonably well at knocking off weight before I was given detention in March. I'd lost about 11 kilos from Christmas but, this morning as I jelly rolled my stomach the distance between the shower and washbasin, ready to shave, apply brylcreem and brush my teeth I couldn't pretend that I wasn't putting it back on again. I also realised that I wasn't wearing slippers. No need for a bathmat on the floor to protect my little tootsies from the cold tiles. Last night, yesterday, we had no heating on anywhere in the house at any time. The pellets I bought for the stove on my first weekly outing in mid March, pellets sold at an incredibly inflated price, are still unused. We've had a very wet few weeks with lots of torrential rain but even when it rains and blows, when the weather definitely isn't nice, it has stopped being cold. We're back to T-shirt weather. In fact my nose is a bit red from the sun and my farmer's tan is returning from the time in the garden.

In those weeks Jess, the cat who was living in the garden, hasn't started to watch the telly with us or claw at the bedhead/sofa/record collection but she does wander in every now and then to see if there is better food down for the house cats than for her in the garden. At the beginning of the confinement she was definitely felina non grata but, 50 days later, Beatriz, Teodoro, Isabel, Fernando and Federico occasionally scream or spit at her but, basically, they tolerate her. We now, definitely, have six cats. In fact sit down to have a cup of tea and read a book in the garden and she's straight up on your knee like a fluffy purring machine. We can only presume that she's a domestic cat that fell on hard times.

Since mid March the garden has gone a luxuriant green, multicoloured actually. Despite tens and tens of man hours (specific not sexist) the weed situation remains unchanged. The little buggers are still everywhere. Outside the house the green is even more impressive and there are reds, yellows, purple and white capped plants everywhere. The explosion of flowers and plants is accompanied by the sounds of all sorts of small flying and crawling beasts. There are birds too, they all make plenty of noise and the swallows leave calling cards all over the car just to remind us that they are back from Africa. Our cats come back covered in ticks - but the ixodida don't dig in and suck blood because the cats were dosed with anti parasite stuff just before quarantine. The ticks do hitch a lift into our living room from time to time. There are thousands of mosquitoes too. The village WhatsApp group has lots of horrid pictures of people covered in bites. We've been affected too, me much less so than Maggie. She always suffers from allergies at this time of year as well but the bites must be infuriatingly itchy. Our guess is that it's all worse because the tractors, the ploughs, the harrows, the pickers and traffic in general hasn't been moving around. Just as the owls are back nesting in the towns, because there's nothing to stop them, that same nothing is not knocking the ticks off their perches and nothing is churning up the puddles and pools to keep the mossies down.

And I won't say anything about the apparently growing stupidity of the Spanish politicians who seem determined to wage their petty little party political wars at enormous potential cost. There is a good chance that the Government won't get the support it needs to extend the State of Alarm for another couple of weeks. My guess is that, with a bit of brinkmanship, they'll get it this time but that will be the last extension following the current model. Once that model goes, and with it the emergency powers, who can say how it will all develop. With a bit of luck all will be calm in Culebrón and the sun will be beating down. My hair may be longer too.

It's being so cheerful as keeps me going

The number of people dying from Covid19 in Spain is dropping. Time to relax the measures. This week youngsters were allowed back on the streets and from May 2nd older people will be able to go out for a walk or do a bit of sport. This relaxation of the quarantine is a part of the several phases that the Government has come up with to slowly remove the siege constraints. I can imagine the "cabinet meeting" where they were trying to work this out. Deciding on rules that work for places that are, still, being scourged by the virus, as against places that have no extra illness whatsoever. Trying to juggle rules that work for rural areas, where butterflies are more common than people, against blocks of flats where leaving your home potentially involves rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses. Trying to come up with a scheme that allowed businesses to re-open without causing a new outbreak of people dying with compromised lungs, hearts and livers. "Phases! - that's how we'll do it. We'll have rules that only apply when an area reaches certain conditions".

I don't think it's a bad idea but we're now at the complaining rather than forgiving stage of the confinement and some of the proposals are, frankly, stupid. Suggesting that hotels open when customers can't travel to them isn't a good solution. Like most people I could list lots and lots of contradictions and problems in the phasing and opposition politicians, trade bodies and professional associations have been doing just that. Picking fault is much easier than optional solutions though.

Anyway, to the point. So imagine I'm talking to someone - "Maggie and I had a bit of a fight last night; we're not talking".  Now compare, "I was in the pub last night and there was a fight." The same word is key but I hope you think there is a difference. There were no slapping about with Maggie but maybe there was in the boozer. Or consider, "I'm off for a walk" and "On Sunday I'm going walking". Which do you think is the more hardcore? In English then the same word or the same sort of word can have, relatively, subtle different meanings. It's the same with Spanish for Spaniards. I've used the example before where the word comer. Normally comer is the generic verb for to eat but, at lunchtime, it means to have lunch. Ask in a Spanish bar at 4pm, the tail end of lunchtime, if they have anything to "comer" and the kitchen has closed then the answer will be "no". You may be able to see snacks in the counter top display or read the sign that says they do sandwiches but the wording of the question was wrong and it's something dictionaries can't really help with.

So yesterday the Government published it's plan for letting us out for doing a bit of individual sport or going for a walk with someone you live with. Basically they divided the day into slots letting different groups of people out at different times and with a distinction between going for a stroll and doing some serious exercise. Grasping the basic idea was child's play though, as with all rules, there are situations which could be open to interpretation especially as the already established rules for moving about remain largely unchanged.

Shortly after the details were published I saw a couple of translations on Facebook in English. One of those organisations was the Citizens Advice Bureau page. I just looked now. There were 353 comments before commenting was turned off. Another, a Facebook page maintained by the Guardia Civil had nearly two and a half thousand comments. Some of the questions were reasonable enough. For instance, right from the beginning, you've been able to take a dog out to do what dogs need to do but you had to keep close to home. With the new regs. you can walk a kilometre from home but can your dogs walk the kilometre too? I actually think the answer is obvious but I suppose it's a grey area.  Was it correct that people who live together can go out for a walk together but they can't go in the same car? There was another question that made me laugh out loud. The Guardia Civil had chosen to be amusing: "You may use bicycles, scooters, roller-skates, surf boards even!, as long as the sport that you are practising, you do it ALONE. Once a day". The nation famed for its irony has at least one citizen who asked if surf board was a mistranslated skateboard.

Half of the questions though were simply moaning, complaining or to show how clever the questioner was. Others were language or culture related. For instance several people complained about going for a walk or a run at night. The slot in question is between 8pm an 11pm and the comment shows a very "English" attitude. Traditionally Spaniards finish work around 8pm so the Spanish reasoning is straightforward; it allows for a bit of an evening stroll after work.

There was also a lot of mumbling about walking. The word in the regulations for the walks close to home is pasear, un paseo. These words were, reasonably enough, translated into English as to walk and a walk. So lots of Britons got on their pedantic, island-centric hobby-horse "Isn't walking exercise?" In fact the use of pasear is more like the British idea of a stroll, or “to have a bit of a walk”. There are other Spanish words to transmit the idea of a more physical, more exercise orientated walk. An idea that I would have thought would be pretty obvious to anyone who actually lives in Spain.

Ah well, I suppose It's being so cheerful as keeps us going to paraphrase Mona Lott

PS Since I wrote the original post we've actually got out and about. The time slots only apply to municipios of over 5,000 people. Municipio is obvious enough, it means municipality, it's the people you pay your local taxes to, the town hall you use for paperwork. In our case, for instance, Pinoso. But, apparently, this is a difficult concept for lots of Britons.