Have you ever wondered about keeping up to date?

The world being connected, as it is nowadays, it would be quite possible to live our life here more or less isolated from things Spanish; we could behave as though home were still Huntingdon. We try not to but we could.

With time things change and so de we. As an easy example the food we eat and the way we buy things has changed radically. Ordering takeaway food to eat at home via my personal phone, without making a call, and having someone deliver it on a bike would have seemed incredible in my youth. Clothes change, habits change, tastes change, everything changes down to the way we speak. Although I've kept my distance and even stayed at home recently I have never shielded or social distanced but I know people who have.

I'm not that interested in keeping up with the UK. I tell my sister that I don't know the names of British politicians. She doesn't believe me. She's partially right in that I do half recognise maybe four or five current British political names but, Boris apart, I couldn't pick any current high value British politician out in a police lineup. It would be easy to catch up. I could sit down with a list and learn some names. I did that with Spanish politicians when I first moved here. Nowadays, dodgy memory aside, I know as much about Spanish politics as I used to know about politics in the UK when I lived there.

This sort of stuff is as important or as unimportant as you want to make it. The music market of my youth was very simple. If Decca hadn't signed the Stones and Parlophone had missed the Beatles then music history may have been different. Labels signed artists and labels pushed for radio plays and TV slots. Young people saw and heard that and went out and bought it, or not. Nowadays I have no idea how people decide which new music they are going to buy. The power of the record labels and the radio stations is nothing like it was and there is so much more out there and accessible than there was. A young person, with a laptop, can produce music in their bedroom which is much better, technically, than the stuff that Capitol recorded for the Beach Boys. It's an easy answer to say that the music is on YouTube or Spotify but how do those people know what they want access to without a radio DJ to act as go between? If you're happy to listen to music from the last century then it's completely irrelevant and if you're only interested in the Top 40 or the ever popular classics it's easy. If, on the other hand, you're interested in knowing what non established musicians are up to a quick glance at Bandcamp or Soundcloud shows just how many artists there are out there. As I said this sort of stuff is either important to you or it isn't. 

I still watch the telly. Lots of younger people, including younger Spanish people don't. They go to Twitch, YouTube and the like. One of the programmes I'm aware of on mainstream terrestrial telly, but very seldom watch, is an interview programme hosted by a bloke called Jordi Évole. He interviewed a Spanish "influencer" called Ibai. I'd never heard of Ibai so I had a look at some of his videos afterwards - he is quite entertaining but it wasn't a Road to Damascus event for me yet 40,000 people like him enough to pay 5€ a month to watch his Twitch channel. 

I'm still doing some online Spanish conversation classes so I get to talk to a couple of younger Spaniards each week. I asked them about Ibai. In turn they told me about other YouTubers and Influencers and Gamers. One of my contacts mentioned David Broncano which was a name I knew because I mentioned him in a blog about forocoches. Another talked about a bloke called Fortfast and when I hunted out his stuff I found news stories about his house burning down and court action from an ex-employee. A few weeks ago more of these Internet media stars made the headlines because they were going to live in Andorra to reduce their tax bills - just like Britons used to move to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. I'm vaguely perturbed that I don't know about this stuff. How is it that I know who Tom Parker was but couldn't tell you the name of a song by Califato ¾?

As I said, this stuff is completely unimportant. I'm not that concerned about being whatever one says nowadays for hip and cool. I don't care (much) that I've never paid for anything with my mobile phone and that I still sometimes use cash but I suppose the problem I have with this "not being in the loop" has to do with that idea of fitting in. I don't want to be an English person, living an English life in a foreign place where the sun shines but the locals speak funny and don't do anything as well as we do.

Peanut butter isn't really a Spanish thing

This morning I was talking to a Sergio. As we got ready to go he said he was off for his breakfast. Get yourself some toast with avocado I quipped. This is because I've recently become aware that avocado on toast is a trendy Spanish breakfast. Sergio quipped back - with peanut butter and mango eh?

One advantage or disadvantage of using Skype to speak to someone is that you see them. I obviously looked confused. Sergio stayed online to say that Social Media Influencers, had been responsible for a huge run on those products in the recent past. He specifically mentioned a 100% peanut peanut butter sold by the Mercadona supermarket chain.

I had a look for Sergio's Internet Influencers by searching for peanut butter and I found them. I found several as you might expect but one bloke, Carlos Ríos, who shows 1.4 million followers on his Realfooding Instagram, popped up time and time again. He was quoted in lots of magazine and newspaper articles. Not that I really read any of the articles or looked at his Instagram properly but it looks as though he rates the healthiness of various foods, recommends easy to prepare healthy snacks and does food related stories with a healthy angle. A reasonable enough way to earn a living in the Internet age. You'll get the idea from one newspaper headline about him;  The nutritionist influencer who taught 400,000 young people to eat like their grandmas. Obviously my Spanish tutor Sergio is aware of these sort of people and the things they post about. They had completely passed me by until today but that's probably because I'm now very old and I say things like "I don't see the point in Instagram and TikTok".

Carlos, on his Realfooding Instagram, recommended this brand of Mercadona peanut butter. As soon as I saw the photos I realised I'd bought some last year. Apparently I'd bought it within days of its launch, I'd tasted it and then thrown it away. It tasted nothing like peanut butter and was completely horrid. Not worthy horrid like that unsalted, unsweetened Whole Earth brand peanut butter I sometimes bought in the UK. No, this peanut butter wasn't simply a bit boring and a bit too chewy for my sugar and fat saturated taste buds. The Mercadona stuff had a horrible runny consistency, it dripped off the toast but, more importantly, it tasted absolutely foul. 

Another lost opportunity to be hip and cool or whatever the TikTok generation says to mean the same!