Playing Detective with Ted Rogers

You'll probably find this really boring and almost incomprehensible so don't feel you need to read on.

During the late 1970s and 1980s there was a quiz show in the UK called 3,2,1 hosted by Ted Rogers. The original format for the show was invented in Spain by a bloke called Chicho Ibáñez Serrador. The Spanish name was the other way around - Un, dos, tres or 1,2,3. It was hugely successful here partly because, at the time, there were only two Spanish TV channels and the one that didn't carry 1,2,3 was rather highbrow.

On the same TV channel, but some 36 years after the last Un, dos, tres was broadcast, we watch a Spanish TV programme called El Ministerio del Tiempo - The Time Ministry. The idea behind El Ministerio del Tiempo is that there is a covert government ministry whose job it is to ensure that Spanish history remains unchanged. They are able to do this because they have access to a system of tunnels which lead to specific dates and places in the past. One of the reasons the past may be in danger is that there are lots of tunnels and not all are controlled by the Ministry. An important part of the background to the programme is that Spain has always had people working for the state, funcionarios, functionaries. As the Ministry of Time has always existed those civil servants were recruited to work for the Ministry of Time in their own period but where they work, in time, is flexible. 

Still with me? So, this week, a woman called Caroline and her husband are on the game show 1,2,3 in 1981. They win the star prize of a flat at the seaside. Caroline isn't a happy woman though. Her husband abuses her and, to escape being beaten up by him, she locks herself in the bathroom. As he pounds on the door she looks for a place to hide and climbs into the airing cupboard which just happens to be one of these time doors; one not one in the care of the Ministry. She comes out of the tunnel just as King Felipe IV is passing by doing a spot of hunting. He takes her in as a part of his Court. One of the things Caroline does there is to introduce 1,2,3 as a sort of parlour game. The King takes a shine to her and they decide to marry. This would rather mess up Spanish history as Felipe should marry Maria Anna of Austria. Our 21st century Time Ministry team spring into action to keep things in order.

At one point in the story the King and Caroline leave a room and say "¿Nos alabamos?" It sounded like a farewell, TTFN, but, literally it means something like "Do we praise ourselves?" It was pretty obvious that it wasn't being used that way and, clearly, it had something to do with the game show - I presumed it was a catch phrase. I went a Googling and then asked a couple of chums for clarification.

The answer is that some of the regular characters in the 1,2,3 show were a comic trio, The Hurtado Sisters or las hermanas Hurtado. Whenever they were leaving the stage they would say "¿Nos alabamos? ¡Hala, vamos! ¡hala, vamos!, ¡hala, vamos!..."  The "hala vamos" means something like "wow, let's go" but the point is that in Spanish Bs and Vs sound the same. Equally Spanish Hs are silent. So, "Hala vamos" and "Alabamos" have exactly the same pronunciation. The catch phrase was a sort of humorous play on words. There is also a second significance for good Catholics because one of the responses that the congregation make during the mass is "Te alabamos Señor" or "We praise you Lord".

And that''s it. I told you you'd find it boring but I feel like a regular Hercule Poirot having found that out.

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.

Lunching out

We're going to have takeaway for lunch. I'm almost beside myself with excitement. Well no, not really, but it is a bit of an event. At the moment almost anything at all different is an event. Of course Maggie is going back to work tomorrow so that will be a big change. With the easing of our confinement we could even go and get a beer outside a bar. I'm not sure how keen I am on that. Great to get a beer and to watch the world go past but it's still a world full of masks and latex gloves and having waited eight weeks I don't want to be too previous. Latex, of course, can be quite interesting. I once went to a club in the West End where everyone wore latex. I'm amazed to this day that they let me in wearing my interview suit but I think it was along the same lines as the Sioux not killing the geologist from the wagon train because they considered he was slightly mad grovelling amongst the stones and mumbling to himself. I talked to a bloke in the club, Skin Two, who I initially thought was really fat but then he undid the ankles on his one piece suit and all the sweat ran out and he was much, much thinner. Latex gloves are more reminiscent of internal exams and dentists than a subculture though and I'd prefer that they weren't an everyday part of my life.

So we don't really have to decide about how much advantage we take of the more relaxed movement from tomorrow, with our area being given Phase 1 status, but today we're still pretty much locked in. I can go and get pre-ordered food though perfectly legitimately. It's not takeaway in the same spirit that Madrid chose to look after it's "free school meal" youngsters by sending TelePizza and McDonald's with chicken McNuggets. They eventually stopped that but not before the President of Madrid defended the food saying something like "I'm sure the kids will enjoy pizza and burgers".

No. Eduardo, our local restaurant in the village has a big sign outside to say that they are doing takeaway. And when they're on form I think the food at Eduardo's is good. Anyway I'm all for supporting a local business and you don't get much more local than our restaurant in Culebrón. We're getting croquettes, gachamiga (a sort of doughy, garlicky pancake) and paella with rabbit and snails. I've just realised. The big paella pan will be hot and it could potentially scorch the carpets in the back of the motor so I'd better give up writing and get to lining the boot with cardboard before Eduardo phones.

Enjoy your lunch too.

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.

One Monday Morning

Today is May 2nd. It's an important date in Spanish, and Madrid history. It is the reason that the famous Goya painting at the left exists. Years ago I wrote this article for the old TIM magazine.

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The 2nd of May 1808. A Monday morning in Madrid. We've had French soldiers swaggering all over the city since March. I blame the old King, King Carlos IV, when he let that lackey of his, Godoy, do a deal with Napoleon to invade Portugal. Imagine that! Our troops fighting alongside all those Frenchy gabachos. Why would we side with that lot after the way they let us down at Trafalgar? Those cowardly Frenchy sailors ran away leaving our lads in the lurch and letting that one eyed, one armed Brit dwarf sink our navy. Lot of good it did the old boy anyway. Napoleon forced him to abdicate in favour of that son of his, Fernando VII, Now old Boney has both our Kings in France at Bayona planning to do goodness knows what with them.

This morning's rumour is that General Murat, Napoleon's brother in law no less, who seems to think that he owns this country, plans to send the last of our Royals up to Bayona. Our worthless puppet government, the Junta de Gobierno, said no but Murat won't take any notice of them. He'll do what he likes. I'm off to the Royal Palace for a bit of a look see. It's time we showed those gabachos that enough is enough.

And that's where it started. Our man, along with a bunch of other Madrileños, the people of Madrid, forced their way into the Palace. Murat had dealt with rioters before. He'd blown a demonstrating mob in Paris apart with canister shot but in Madrid the result was different. Instead of running home and hiding, as the Parisians had done, the Madrileños began to fight.

Murat was confident of his army. The men in Madrid were a part of the Grande Armée of France. The Great and Invincible French Army that had crushed everyone and everything in it's path for years. It included not only Frenchmen but soldiers gathered together from all over Europe, and beyond: Dutch cavalry, Hungarian Hussars, Polish horsemen and the fearsome, turban wearing, desert warriors, the Mamelukes. The finest army in the world against a rabble, ridden with lice, living in hovels and armed with knives and outdated shotguns. That rabble was angry though and in the narrow streets of Madrid hordes of them fell on those fine cavalry horses and their moustachioed riders, overwhelmed them and hacked them to pieces with their long country knives. Dragoons, who had survived the bloodiest battles in history, died in a rain of plant-pots hurled from balconies by housewives.

Spanish troops garrisoned in the city had been confined to barracks before the revolt because the French didn't quite trust them. Two captains, Luis Daoíz and Pedro Velarde, stationed at Monteleón Artillery Barracks, disobeyed orders, joined the insurrection and became national heroes. They organised a handful of soldiers and ordinary Madrileños who not only beat off the first French attack but took the commanding general prisoner. Murat was amazed and furious. He sent a larger force to overwhelm the Spanish defence. Both Spanish officers perished in the attack.

The French eventually regained control of the city. The best figures suggest that over four hundred Spaniards died, many of them before summary firing squads (The Goya painting), when the fighting was over. French losses were about 130.

On June15 Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, was proclaimed King of Spain, leading to a general anti-French revolt. In August, a British force under Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, landed on the Portuguese coast. By mid 1809, the French had abandoned Portugal. In Spain it took longer for the British and Spanish to defeat Napoleon's army and it wasn't till 1813 that the Battle of Vitoria finally saw the French driven from the Iberian peninsula.

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.

Six cats eat a lot of food

My weekly pilgrimage into our local town this morning. My sixth or seventh so far I think. I asked Maggie if she wanted to do it because she's not been out of the house for 47 days now. She preferred not to.

The roads seemed just a tad busier than last week. There was a police control at the crossroads in to Pinoso but he was checking traffic coming from another direction. Plenty of parking space in the town centre car park because nothing much is open and very few people are visibly working. My first stop was the Post Office. It was the first outing, the premiere, for my free (thanks to the Regional Valencian Government) face mask. I'd got gloves too. To be honest I'm a fan of neither but I'm happy to be civic. There was no queue at the Post Office which was a bit of a surprise. There can only be two (or possibly three) people inside so there is usually a patient, spaced out (not in the Seventies way) line of people waiting outside. Not today. Straight in. I only wanted to check our mailbox so I ducked and waddled underneath the glass side counter to avoid having to squeeze past the customer at the perspex encased desk.

Supermarket next. We're a bit too rural for home delivery. There was a masked police officer outside. He waved. Small town life. Remarkably there was space in the tiny supermarket car park and no queue to get in either. The lad squirted alcohol wash onto my gloves and then fitted new plastic gloves over the latex ones. They make it nearly impossible to open those thin plastic bags you use to put fruit and veg in but, as I struggled, one of the supermarket staff offered to help. Her nitrile gloves were less slippery. Shopping was routine. I didn't even have to wait at the delicatessen cum butchery counter. There was nothing much in short supply, there had been no butter last week but there was this. People generally kept their distance. There were no children and nobody was doing that "I don't believe a word of this so I'm not going to play along with these stupid restrictions game". I didn't meet anyone who I knew which is the first time that that's happened so the shopping got done faster! I was two trolley loads back for the checkout and the woman in front of me was slow to unpack, had trouble with her bank card and didn't seem keen to move away from the end of the checkout. After a while she realised I was waiting. "No problem," I said, "I'm hardly in a hurry". "No, nobody is," she replied. Plastic gloves to the approved bin, trolley to the car for unpacking and the emptied trolley to the disinfecting queue. Me back in the car and off towards home.

Two police vehicles working the exit from town but again I was lucky and didn't have to wait in a queue of stopped cars or explain what I'd been up to. Back through the house gate and glad to be home.

Moving my lips as I read

I was sitting in the garden. I had my feet up and a beer in one hand and an electronic book in the other so I was reading and drinking or drinking and reading. Maggie pounded past every now and then following that couch to five kilometres programme. One of the cats looked on.

I like books as things. I always think of bookshops as being precise; very neat. They often have a lovely smell too. Fan the pages as you sniff or just breathe deeply as you browse. Nowadays Spanish bookshops are much like British ones - easy access shelves and an impossible range of classifications which only make sense to the person who chose the labelling system. I mean is Philip K. Dick's Rick Deckard in a detective or a sci-fi novel? Not so long ago Spanish bookshops used to be much more difficult, much darker, very Dickensian, musty even. They had men with pince-nez behind wooden counters acting as gatekeepers to the shelves piled high with books at their backs. Old style Spanish bookshops had almost no recognisable organisation and if you were after something specific you couldn't browse - you had to ask. That scared me to death - speaking Spanish. Besides, when you asked you were committed. Do you have Blahdy blah by whatchamacallher? and you were on the road to an order and a two week wait to get the book that could cost a surprising amount of money. Some dozen or so years ago a recommendation for Antonio Gala's, Cosas nuestras set me back 45€ in paperback.

Nowadays I tend to read on a Kindle because, if I'm reading in Spanish, I can use the inbuilt dictionary to look up any key words I don't know. It was Kindle that confirmed me as a staunch Amazon customer. They have nearly everything and they deliver faster than you can drive to the shop. Spanish books are expensive, they have a controlled retail price with discounting only allowed to, I think, 5% of publishers recommended price so the price isn't that important because the market is artificially controlled. I sometimes use other online suppliers, especially for out of print books, but because I'm an Amazon customer it's dead easy to order a book within seconds of reading a review or hearing a recommendation. As the seconds become minutes, if the book exists in electronic form, it's yours. Real paper books come tomorrow or maybe the day after. I know about Amazon and taxes but I know that you too are happy to avoid taxes when you can and there is a chasm between tax evasion and tax avoidance.

I buy only novels from Amazon. I still buy books with pictures from bookshops or sometimes online. The last paper book I bought, because I expected it to have pictures, was about some of the plants featured in the paintings in the Prado museum. I made the mistake of ordering it from a shop in Pinoso. It was a lovely book and I enjoyed it a lot but it cost me 22€ for a paperback and, more annoyingly, it took 5 weeks, yes 5 weeks, to arrive.

With Spain being closed the bookshops are closed too. The independent stores are in danger of going under. I listen to a couple of radio programmes that have a cultural bent and both of them seem to be mounting a campaign in defence of bookshops. I don't quite understand why. Retail is a cut-throat business. Grocer's shops, cobblers, clothes shops, horse crop retailers, in fact all independent shops, were overwhelmed by big stores. Nowadays those physical shops are increasingly under pressure from online retailers. Why is there such a feral defence of bookshops when there wasn't for ironmongers or record shops? Is it a class thing?

Eating seagull

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.

As we navigate the new normal

There was a little flurry of activity in the village WhatsApp group on Wednesday afternoon. Someone had died, someone with quite an unusual name. Was it the someone with that name from the village? It turned out to be a false alarm, well a false alarm for Culebrón. There was a Covid death but it was a different person from a village a few miles away. There's no doubt though that illness, and maybe death, is lurking around the corner.

I've just watched a programme on the tele where reporters followed cleaners, ambulance drivers, doctors on emergency admissions, nurses, the people running the logistics for the hospitals, the pathologists and the UCI staff etc. as they did their various jobs at several hospitals across Spain. It was all a very human experience as people going on shift waited while their names were written in thick marker on their protective clothing so they were recognisable through the disguise, as tired medical staff laughed as they drank coffee in their breaks, cried as they said goodbye to people who had recovered, sobbed as bodies were wheeled out to the morgue, showed a gentle pride in a job well done, kept their nerve as the machines monitoring whatever they monitor did that flat-lining thing and cursed under their breaths as the morning round robin video conference between regional hospitals listed the dead from the day before.

It was a programme that made me angry at the armchair pundits and their "what a lot of fuss about something that is killing fewer people than flu does routinely every year", cross at the idiot politicians seeking scapegoats for their own mistakes, cross at the politicians using the current situation for political manoeuvring and cross at the egotistical behaviour of any number of individuals who decide that they know better because the rules and procedures as not really relevant in their case.

It also made me acutely aware of how nice it is to live in a quiet backwater where the cuckoos are still cuckooing and the pain and suffering has, so far, largely passed us by.

Singing along

I heard a news item that said that someone had died. The name sounded, on first hearing, to be Mujica but in fact it was Múgica. The first, José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica, is an ex Uruguayan president, who has YouTube video after video overflowing with avuncular socialist wisdom and the other is Enrique Múgica Herzog who was, in Francoist times and during the transition, an important Spanish politician. The Uruguayan I knew in the same way as one knows Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Steve Jobs. The Spaniard I didn't know at all.

I've mentioned a pal who lives in el Cantón, a small village just over the border into Murcia, a couple of times in the last few blogs. His village seems to be being pretty "solidario" at the moment and they've made a couple of videos; the together, as a team, we can win sort of videos. One of the clips, the second part of the video, shows people from the village singing along to Resistiré, a song from the 80s which has become a familiar song again, all over Spain, in the past few weeks. It's a Spanish version of the Gloria Gaynor song "I will survive". It was originally done by the Dúo Dinámico (Dynamic Duo) with similar sentiments but completely different lyrics to the original - When I lose every game, when I sleep with loneliness..., I'll stand firm, like the reed that bends but doesn't break. It scans better in Spanish but, even then, it is not something that Lope de la Vega would be proud to have written. Now I know Resistiré, no idea why but I do. My pal in el Cantón didn't so whilst everyone else sang along as they clapped along he was participating from a different starting point.

When we first came to Spain we used to buy an English language newspaper called the Costa Blanca news. There was a small section on the weeks Spanish headlines. I remember carefully writing down the names of the politicians mentioned in that roundup trying to get up to speed with my new home. I still try to keep up to date but I've never been good with remembering people and I seem to be finding it more and more difficult to assimilate Spanish names. For instance there's a power struggle going on within the managing board of Barcelona F.C. at the moment. A new president has to be elected soon and it looks as though the "crown prince" has turned on the present boss and, amidst allegations of corruption, resigned and taken other committee members with him. The first two names are the important ones but look at this lot - Josep Maria Bartomeu, Emili Rousaud, Enrique Tombas, Silvio Elías, Josep Pont, Maria Teixidor and Jordi Calsamiglia. How does someone brought up on names like Jackie Charlton, Margaret Thatcher and George Alagiah deal with remembering names like those?

The cultural stuff. The Resistiré type song is even more difficult. I can have a crack at remembering the names of people in the news because I have a source but think of the of the tunes that make up your own musical knowledge. You can sing along to I Will Survive, Someone You Loved, Wonderwall, The Magnificent Seven, The Long and Winding Road and another zillion songs. You know another how many actors? And writers? And celebs? The learning of a lifetime.

It's a complicated business recognising a name or being able to sing along.

Solid

When it comes to National Identity I'm not a believer. I don't, for instance, see anything to be proud of in having been born in a particular place and I don't think  that the people of one nation are intrinsically different to the people of another. I do believe though that we all learn from our surroundings and that, as such, there are learned, generalised, national traits.

One thing that Spaniards like to say about themselves is that they are "solidario". It's not an easy word to translate into English - it's the attitude of being supportive, caring, empathetic, sympathetic and in it together.

Whenever there is an earthquake or hurricane somewhere in the world there will be something in the Spanish news about us being solidario and sending this or that team of rescue workers, search dogs, blankets or tents. The truth is that Spain has cut its foreign aid and only spends about 0.14% of it's Gross Domestic Income (GDI) on overseas aid. As a Briton, seeing those teams, supplies and tents being loaded onto the Airbus Atlas I often think the help looks paltry and late. One of the things we British can be proud of is that the UK is one of only seven countries in the world which has reached the 0.7% of GDI overseas aid target agreed at the United Nations. The UK economy is much bigger than Spain's so in folding we're talking 19 billion British dollars as against 1.6 billion Spanish dollars.

At the moment people are dying in hordes all over the World because of coronavirus. Spain has been one of the countries hardest hit though the latest figures for the UK are equally terrible. In fact the situation in Spain is probably much worse than reported. Imagine someone breathes their last in a Spanish care home. The person died because their lungs could not take in sufficient oxygen or expel sufficient carbon dioxide. The doctor can't put Covid 19 on the death certificate as the cause of death because there has been no corona virus test. The doctor writes pulmonary insufficiency in the space on the certificate and the death is not recorded as a part of the daily toll.

Maggie and I have taken to watching more television news broadcasts, both British and Spanish, during the pandemic. On the Spanish news the format is usually the latest national coronavirus news along with the political and economic news surrounding it plus the stories about shortages, bad planning etc. That's followed by a coronavirus update from around the world. Then there's the other news, a fair bit of sporting stuff (goodness knows how when there is no sport) and then lots of little human interest, soft news, stories.

The softer news stories are multifaceted. It might be about people using their 3D printers, sewing machines and production lines to make this or that for health workers or about football clubs opening their changing rooms for lorry drivers or about the children sending thank you drawings to police officers. Then there's usually lots and lots of applauding. Applause for the people giving impromptu concerts from their balconies, applause for firefighters who haven't been home for days as they drive by their home to sing  Happy Birthday over the loudspeakers to their locked in son, the line of siren blaring Civil Protection, Guardia Civil and Police cars "applauding" the supermarket workers. Today there has been lots of Easter ritual performed from balconies to applaud and, of course, every evening at 8pm we have applause for everyone from everyone.

The British news has the same sort of stories, maybe with a bit more complaining about the wrong responses, but there seem to be far fewer, hardly any, of the uplifting, morale boosting, we're all in this together stories. Maybe I've just missed them or maybe the Spaniards are right in thinking they are more Solidario.

New words and more staying at home

One of the reasons our water heater stopped working was that water was coming down the chimney and soaking the electrics and electronics. We've had lots of torrential rain recently and, the other evening, at around half past midnight the chimney began to drip again. I shimmied up onto the roof and covered the chimney with a plastic bag. The chimney has a hat like cover but it doesn't seem able to keep out the rain when it comes down in bucket-loads. The next morning I was back on the roof to cobble together a wider brimmed hat. I described the repair as Heath Robinson to someone on Twitter. For those of you who don't know William Heath Robinson (1872 – 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives.

Heath Robinson is a part of my linguistic armoury just like crikey, whoops a daisy and wide boy. Old fashioned words. I've been away from the UK for a while now and Spain is a country where there is a tendency to call a spade a spade. Nobody here seems to wince at calling someone with one arm a manco or someone with one eye tuerto and the immigration office is called that - well it's called extranjería actually but the point is good. Being out of the UK means that words get to me long after they have become common street currency. When I first heard Brexit I thought it was a stupid term. A smokescreen of a word. Social distancing and self isolation strike me as just as ponderous. When I lived in the UK though I was happy enough to accept linguistic changes of the same style without a murmur. In fact, in general I have no problems with the newer forms of English. Most of them are simply US usage and they reflect the importance of the USA as the powerhouse of the English language. I still notice two times instead of twice, more noisy instead of noisier and forms like "I'll get a beer" and "I'm good, thanks" but they don't particularly jar. Often I think the new forms are well conceived. A Briton was complaining to me about the noun, a big ask. I quite like it myself. Descriptive, easy to use and I'm not aware of any simpler alternative. The older forms are still available anyway. They may give me coffee in a cardboard cup with a lid but nobody has ever tried to force me to drink through the little hole so far.

It's odd though because with being home so much recently I've seen quite a lot of "box sets" on "streaming platforms" and I find that I often don't understand what is being said even though they are speaking English. I still have problems understanding Spanish as well and sometimes the two languages bump into each other so that I find that I can't think of the English for the Spanish word, which I understand,  just as I often don't know the Spanish for an English word.

Listening to this afternoon's speech by our President, Pedro Sanchez, on the tele caused me almost no problems at all with understanding. He speaks slowly to sound Presidential; lots of we're a great nation, pulling together, steadfast behind the heroic health workers etc. I suppose it's the speech writers and autocue machines really rather than him. You'd think the US Government would buy one for Donald Trump so he didn't sound like an incompetent clown but they haven't so he does. Pedro told us that he will be taking the extension of the estado de alarma, (lockdown to you), to parliament for another fortnight's extension.

I heard yesterday that a newspaper survey found that 54% of Spaniards thought that Central Government was doing a poor job. Once upon a time I used to organise sporting and cultural events for young people. I grew to hate disco dance. Over the years I was attacked several times, usually verbally but sometimes physically, because irate mothers held me responsible for the the way some experts had judged the dance performance of their daughter or her team. I'm sure the Spanish Government has made lots and lots of errors in it's handling of the corona virus pandemic but I suppose it would have been the same civil servants and the same experts advising the Government whatever political hue it was. I've also noticed that there is a great similarity between the moans about the handling of the crisis whether that's aimed at Pedro's Socialists or Boris's Conservatives. I don't know but I suppose that re-arranging a country in a couple of weeks is nearly as difficult as dealing with disco dance mothers!

I'm a bit worried that the new two week extension will toughen up the rules about wearing masks in the street. We don't have a mask. Amazon offers several but delivery dates are into June by which times the cats could well have run out of food and eaten us. But, at the moment, all is well in Culebrón and, in a rather surreal way, quite pleasant.

Keep safe!, stay well! or ¡cuidaos!

Using your loaf

I thought I might write a blog. Then I realised that nothing has happened to me for days so I couldn't. Later, as I pottered at some unremarkable task or another, it came to me that I knew a story, dated from the year 1305, about a Scottish bloke watching a spider. If that was enough to pique people's interest maybe I could think of something. So, here it is.

Yesterday, as I sorted the recycling in the rain, someone papped their horn as they passed the gate. Now horn papping is currently a big event in Culebrón; worthy of investigation. I duly investigated. It was a white van and our next door neighbour was buying something from the driver. I kept my distance but I wondered what he was selling. Instead of asking in person I asked via WhatsApp. First I asked a British family who live on the other side of the main road, the one where they disinfected the streets today, if they knew anything about travelling shops. When the response hadn't come within an hour or so I sent another WhatsApp to the Spanish family next door. They told me it had been a bread van coming in from Pinoso.

My search for new challenges, for novel experiences, is almost boundless. Obviously ordering bread via WhatsApp just had to be tried. Tapping out my order I suddenly realised that I didn't know the names of a particular sort of loaf I wanted. This is not new. I had the same problem in the Waitrose in Huntingdon about 20 years ago when I (apparently) wanted a Farmhouse Bloomer. This time though I couldn't point. It was a very long WhatsApp message to get an ordinary sort of loaf and a couple of breadsticks. The comparison with the bloomer still holds. "Please can I have a brown farmhouse bloomer?" versus "Please can I have that large brown crusty loaf with rounded ends and parallel diagonal slashes across its top?"

The British family responded in time. They didn't tell me about Javier the baker though, they told me about Augustine and his travelling grocer cum greengrocer's van. Bread on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, groceries on Tuesday and Thursday.

Like a magician I revealed all of this to Maggie. Well a van from Carrefour (a huge French owned supermarket) passed the other day she said. There seems to be just so much that I don't know about shopping in Culebrón!

And something completely different to finish. I was talking yesterday to a bloke who lives in a nearby village called Cantón. The official figure for the population of el Cantón is 103 but I'd be amazed if that many people actually live there all year around. Nonetheless my pal says that in the village, as nearly everywhere in Spain, every evening at 8pm the neighbours get out on their balconies and back patios to applaud, shout and generally make noise to show their support for the people keeping us going at the moment and particularly the health workers. I'm sure it happens in Culebrón too but we're too far away to hear or be heard.

Heart in the small talk

I'm a sucker for gestures. The bit in Casablanca, where Laszlo says "Play the Marseillaise, play it!" and Rick nods, and they do, and they out-sing the baddies always makes me tear up.

I was just watching a video of someone called Gustaf Farwell banging out Nessun Dorma from his balcony in Barcelona just like Gavinana Maurizio Marchini did in Florence. Every time I watch the TV news I see health workers applauding patients coming off ventilators, I see the people clapping to cheer on the lorry drivers, health workers and everyone else who is keeping us going. It's good and positive. I even approve of the glossy videos being put together by the banks and supermarkets so that we identify them with the white hats when the time goes back to shopping and opening accounts. Lots of gestures.

I'm not so keen on the complaining. Complaints are often justified, I enjoy a good complain myself, I complain a lot, there are plenty of daft buggers in the world and plenty of stupid processes to complain about. The problem is that picking fault with everything and everyone isn't really that useful as it's happening and unless there's something to be done about it.

I had a headteacher when I was at secondary school who was as stupid and as pompous a little man as you could ever wish to meet. He did, though, habitually defend (what was then) British Rail with what I considered was a sound argument. It's all well and good, he said, complaining when the points freeze and the trains are thrown into chaos for a couple of days every February and pointing out that in Sweden they have heated points but the truth is that the conditions are different, the situation is different and if British Rail did spend millions on installing heated points then someone would point out the waste of money.

It does seem to me that, once the game is on the best you can do is the best you can do. Obviously when it's all over you can do a bit of finger pointing and calling to account. Maybe things can be improved so that next time the mistakes are different ones. In the meantime I'm all for the gestures of solidarity. To the politicians trying to do their best, to the health workers being forced to manufacture protective clothing from bin bags, to the volunteer food deliverers, to the celebrities giving money, to the people sewing masks or using their 3D printers to produce ventilators, to the cleaner in the old people's home who has decided to stay on, to the singing and non singing police officers and to those people who can't do those things so instead they organise an online yoga session, dress up as dinosaurs on the balcony, shout Happy Birthday across the street or make uplifting YouTube videos.