After 39 days of going nowhere and doing nothing there's also nothing to write about but that's not going to stop me.We're not really seeing anyone. Occasionally we exchange distant words with our immediate next door neighbour and the arrival of the bread van causes near crowd control problems as the three of us dance around each other. We don't feel at all isolated though. The outside world flows into our lives, as it almost certainly does into yours, through the Internet. Amazing really. Keeping in touch is so easy - a message to friends, a VOIP telephone call, video calls, Zoom based zumba sessions.
Besides the personal stuff the news rolls in in endless torrents through this or that phone or computer application, I have apps that harvest newspaper stories and podcasts. Quite honestly I can't keep up. And the trouble is that newspapers and podcasts lead to recommendations for music or more books. The ordinary broadcast tele and the radio haven't gone away either but the digital platforms are also demanding of our attention. Lots of providers are giving stuff away that they would normally charge for but for some reason that didn't stop me renting my first ever online film the other day. I'm seriously considering subscribing to a sort of arty Spanish film channel too. I'm hesitating there though because when, if, the world gets back to normal I hope that we'll be able to go back to the cinema (though I suspect we'll lose even more of the independent providers). That being the case I'll be able to see films as they should be seen on a big screen. Nonetheless I fear that I'll never quite get around to cancelling that monthly FILMIN subscription.
I know that people are dying but that's not part of our experience. We're reasonably much out of harms way and simply keeping ourselves to ourselves. The consequences of stopping the world are countless and once you begin to think about them it becomes overwhelming. The economic damage being done to every sort of business is obviously going to be devastating. Whether you're Inditex or the bloke with the newspaper kiosk business must just have faded away. The closed restaurants and bars, the bookshops, the car dealers, the petrol stations, the shoe makers and thousands and thousands of other businesses are going to be hard hit and I presume that it will kill some of them off.
I was thinking about the almost unnoticed casualties. Normally I quite like micro-adventures - the local fiesta, a bit of ballet at the theatre in the next town, some up and coming band playing a nearby venue, the book launch and even the occasional sporting event. Watching those events cancel one after the other is sad in itself but I was wondering about the ways that the cancellations must affect people's lives. Doing the Mediaeval Markets or selling helium balloons can't be a secure lifestyle to start with, particularly if there are no markets and no street events. Consider the way that Easter was cancelled. Easter is huge in Spain with processions the length and breadth of the country. The people in the KKK type hats parade alongside hundreds and hundreds of floats decorated with flowers. Will the flower growers and the florists survive? Even more esoteric, in a world lit by LEDs, lots of the Easter penitents carry big candles. I don't suppose those candle makers will be selling many this year. How many more similar examples must there be?
I subscribe to the WhatsApp group run by the Teatro Principal in Alicante. Normally they send me messages to remind me that they have a ballet next week, or an illusionist or a play. Once the Covid19 thing got under way they started to send me the same sort of information but with postponed or cancelled written across it. Strangely one of the things I often think about when I go to a theatre is the odd sort of work that some people have there. The stagehands, the people who show you to your seat, the people who look after the cloakroom, the people who clean up afterwards and so on. The work can't be particularly reliable and it must only be worth a few euros each time. I fear that the people who do that sort of work really need that extra bit of income to make ends meet and now it will all have dried up.
Economic devastation aside it's going to be a sad year without lots and lots of fiestas, fairs, theatre, concerts and festivals. We've had nearly everything we'd booked up for cancelled right through the summer. Just today they announced the cancellation of Sanfermines (the bull running affair) in Pamplona. I'm sure that the economy surrounding that event is enormously important in the city and I can imagine the hundreds of hotel room booking being cancelled as I type. What are they going to do with those thousands of red neckerchiefs? How will the city bars survive without that surge in business? I suppose the silver lining is that, if they were able to work through the complicated thought processes involved, the bulls may at least be happier with the cancellation.
