Always too slow

I hate that old person thing. It's six in the morning; I'm wide awake, it's pretty obvious that I'm not going back to sleep and, eventually, I get up out of sheer boredom. Particularly with the better weather I'm nearly always up quite early though, if I were given the opportunity, and if my body didn't betray me, I'd stay in bed reasonably late. I don't know if you recall the old music hall song  which had a character called Burlington Bertie who rose at 10.30 to walk down the Strand, with his gloves in his hand? Bertie's routine just wouldn't mesh well with the traditionally ordered Spanish day.

I think everyone knows that Spain, historically, has a split day. That's changing and modern working hours in larger cities follow all sorts of models very similar to the rest of Europe. The traditional Spanish timetable though is still alive and well. Again there are variations but the split day involves four or five morning working hours through till lunch at 2pm and then an evening session through till eight or nine. So with Bertie's 10.30 start, and presuming that he has a shower and gets breakfast and what not, he probably won't be on the Strand till around one in the afternoon. Both the Courtauld Institute of Art and Somerset House are on the Strand. Easy for Bertie to pop in to but, if he, and they, were in Spain he'd probably have to make a choice. Both places would, almost certainly close at two, and they'd be throwing out from one forty five. Doing both in 45 minutes might be a tad rushed.

So, the weekend. If Maggie works on Saturday morning, as she does alternate weeks, then basically Saturday is lost. The morning is gone and lots of fairs, fiestas and things in general close down for lunch. Museums do too and they don't do the Saturday afternoon session because they work Sunday morning instead. If I want to go anywhere I could do it alone of course, as I could on every other day of the week, but that isn't my preferred model.

Same on Sunday. If we're not out of bed till 10 the day conspires against us. Any deviation from the task of getting out and moving - a cooked breakfast, a long Facebook session - and the morning is scuppered. The only way to do anything, to "enjoy yourself" is to be grimly determined to get up and get out.

Obviously there are lots of things that don't work to that timetable which we can get to and I'm quietly ignoring the way the Spanish adapt their timetable to the summer by starting lots of things quite late in the evening. Notwithstanding, it is very true that lots of events do require a planned commitment or they simply escape.