Oh dear! I shall be too late!

Sleep's a funny thing for we older people. Put me in front of the telly or set me to reading in the garden and I'll soon be snorting away and dribbling onto my shirt. On the other hand staying asleep in bed is a problem. If it's not the bladder or my aching back then I just get bored. So today was quite odd because, when I first looked at my watch it was nearly 10am. That's the day gone I thought.

Getting up late on Sunday isn't a venal sin or anything but it does have a big disadvantage in Spain. It basically knocks out any daytime events.

Most people know that the Spanish tend to eat late - lunch from around two but maybe as late as four and dinner from maybe nine till around ten thirty. Summer times can be later. I remember reading a Blasco Ibañez (1867-1928) book where the family were preparing a grand lunch for friends and they were planning to eat at twelve thirty. I wondered at the time if the more modern, later, meal times were to do with changes in the working day and then promptly forgot all about it. I was reminded of the earlier sittings recently with the debate that has been going on about ending the clock changing that goes on every March and October. In a radio discussion someone was arguing that clock time and schedules were different things. He said that, before the time in Spain and France was moved to coincide with the time in Nazi Germany, Spaniards had always eaten at around one in the afternoon. When you think about it as Spain sets down to eat at 2pm the clocks are chiming one in England. In turn that made me wonder what the UK will do when the rest of the Union stops changing its clocks. Maybe the staunchest of Britons will argue for proper British time, GMT, to go along with blue pàssports and non pink driving licences.

So Spanish morning events almost inevitably finish at around 2pm. Markets and selling events will start to pack away even before that time. If you have an all day event everything will re-open for the evening session anytime after 5 or 6pm but if it's an evening only event it can start anytime from 8pm to midnight even in Autumn. Summer start times for evening events are often around either side of midnight. So, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes this morning and looked at that 10am watch I knew that it was unlikely we'd be going anywhere much today.

Knives and forks

It's odd what you stop noticing. Because of her job Maggie talks to lots of people who are new to the area. One of her clients, let's call her Betty, was telling Maggie about an experience in a local restaurant. Betty asked for a red wine to go with her set price meal. She was was pleasantly surprised when the waiter left the bottle on the table. Lots of wine from around here is still not premium product, it's something for drinking, so leaving the bottle with the implicit offer to drink as much of it as you want, is still very common. I wouldn't have noticed.

We went to a couple of posher than our usual style of restaurant last weekend. When I was telling a pal about the restaurants. I described them as "the sort of place where they take your cutlery after each course". I realised that the description presumed a little knowledge of everyday restaurant practice. Nowadays I would never think to leave my knife and fork at attention on the plate when I have finished the first course. I would set them to one side ready for the second course. Our guests from the UK don't and the waiter or waitress has to do it for them.

That was the idea, when I first started the blog, a sort of ooh!, aah!, look how funny that is. Nowadays, when a visiting Briton wants to pay at the bar for the drink as soon as it is served, when visitors find it strange that restaurants are not open midweek in the evening and when they really think that most Spaniards have a bit of a sleep in the afternoon I don't usually say anything.

So many of those things that were strange are now usual and some of the things that were usual are now strange. The strangest thing, for me, is when other long term immigrants still find those things strange after years and years here.