Spanish Practices

Transcript: Day 98 The End? Sunday and the Alarma is over, Lockdown is unlocked, 99 days, it started on Saturday March 14th, but actually I consider that weekend to be the two phoney days of Lockdown. Saturday 14th March was a pretty normal day, the supermarket rammed with people taking everything off the shelves, including the toilet paper, something that the Spanish do not a use a lot of, most prefer to wash in the bidet than smear on the pan, as it were. Sunday was equally as busy as people rushed around to be in the right place before the strict measures and fines started on Monday 16th March.  Our friends Jen and Dave making a run for it to their seaside flat, Jen told me “Well it will only be for fourteen days, so we grabbed a few things from the village flat and drove early to the coast.” As it turned out it has been 99 days and Jen only had her flip flops to wear which after week three fell to pieces and had to patched up with sticking plaster. For us that first day felt, well felt like this: CLIP: So, 99 days, the first thing that happened was our air-conditioning failed due to a power surge that also, we discovered destroyed our faithful ten-year-old iMac computer, then the business laptop decided to join the other two in a suicide pact. That left us with one working laptop and the challenge of buying a new laptop and fixing the air conditioning in full Lockdown. Ricardo came to the rescue for the air conditioning, finding a new unit tucked away in a warehouse, the laptop had to come all the way from China.  The iMac now resides in our workshop waiting for a trip to Harry the Russian who fixes computers in town. Chris was out of a job, Spain shut all Gyms on Saturday 14th including the one where he was working, but thanks to our Administration ladies they were able to fill in the complicated online paperwork so that Chris could receive some money from the Government. Then there was the silence, no traffic, no planes, nothing but birdsong and the waves crashing against the shorelines.  Weird but after a few weeks, quite relaxing. Our British friends fleeing the country so that they could look after their parents back in the UK.  They left so fast that they had to leave their precious dog behind.  He hasn’t seen them for months now, poor love, but he is enjoying life with a family who run a local kennels.  It took them two days driving pretty much non-stop through Spain and France to grab a ferry back to England.  Petra says she never ever wants to go through that again. Being really worried about our family, for a few weeks Britain just ignored the Pandemic and my elderly parents went out to a packed pub lunch on Sunday March 15th – but bless them, after that they stayed at home, I think they picked up the seriousness of the situation. It all seems a long time ago now as we sit outside in the warm sun, the road below noisy and busy, the sounds of the motorcyclists haring round the coast road, great gaggles of cyclists shouting encouragement to each other and on Saturday evening the sea was filled with silly boys on jet skis racing each other, yachts out from Marina de Este, little fishing boats and the odd canoe, far off on the horizon a stream of container ships were heading out to the Atlantic. Parasols decorated the beach in the distance, all perfectly socially distanced thanks to the lifeguards and the new officers of beach protection. Chris turned to me and said, “it is if this never happened, like some kind of dream.” The fact is, it is still happening, it has not gone away and it has not ended, probably not ended for years to come, even if a vaccine was found, it would take years to administer and there would be parts of the world, I am thinking poor parts, that will not be vaccinated. There currently is no proper control of the virus, it looks like a particular steroid might help, but it seems to have many side effects, My LBC colleague Ken Guy took it for cancer he says on Facebook: I see that the steroid Dexamethazone could be useful in the treatment of Covid 19. It was part of my cancer treatment back in 2009 and should still be, but I gave it the flick pass sometime back. I took six pills each Monday. It kept me awake till Wednesday and produced mood swings. Neither Gracie nor I appreciated its effect, so I’ve not taken it since. I should point out he is an Australian. So here in Spain we might be at the end of Lockdown, but we are only at the beginning of the understanding of what this virus is and does, where it actually came from, bat? Wet market? Laboratory Accident? Will it mutate? Will it return in the Autumn and cause another Lockdown? Will the effects of the virus be nothing compared to the economic havoc it has reeked across the world? The virus is like life, full of more questions than answers, and in life you should always dare to take risks.  As humankind we took a risk climbing down from the safety of the trees, learning to stand upright, our lives are all about risk. Thank you for listening to Spanish Practices these last few months, our biggest hope is, weirdly, that we do not have to come back for another season, that dear Spain never has to go through Lockdown ever again, stay safe and well, Goodbye. lFd58mibb6I6ULlLi8Ew

Full transcript: Day 97 Of mousy women and men Saturday the weather is calm, the sun is shining, I have been doing some extreme weeding on the mountainside and managed to not fall down, the one time I did I thought it was best to relax and just let my body slide to a bit where I could cling on.  Our garden in Essex did not have the same extreme challenges, unless you count the incredible numbers of snails that ate their way through most of our English garden. I have been spending some time reflecting, yesterday about the reasons why we came to Spain, today a reflection of things past.  Sometimes it is not healthy to keep reliving the past, much better to look forward to the future. But often the future is fashioned by the past, all my mental health problems during the 1990s definitely changed me long-term as a person. I am pleased to say now I am a much more ‘mellow’ individual, although I am still capable of falling off my perch as my dear colleague Richard Dallyn used to say. Over the years we have worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, some like us ordinary, some famous, some politicians’ others who might fall into the celebrity status, whatever that now means. By 1997 I had already become an old lag at LBC and was often pressed into service to train the new young blood coming through the radio station. I remember one such day when I was training a new studio engineer, it was the two Julia’s show, Julia Sommerville the Presenter and Julia the Producer. Julia the Producer decided that it was a bonus having me in the studio as it meant she could go sit out in the office and catch up on the paperwork that we all had to fill in to comply with the Broadcast regulations of the time. I agreed and asked what was on the show, she said “A regular guest and some children’s author.”  “Fine,” I replied, I was quite happy that there wasn’t anything complicated about the show. First up I left my charge and went up to collect the regular guest, who was been badged up by the very efficient reception staff at ITN.  Down we went to the basement, sorry, lower atrium of the large glass and steel building that is ITN studios. The guy I was training had been good, had engineered a junction into a commercial break and out again with no problems. Then a call from reception, the next guest had arrived.  I left my charge once again to travel those sick making glass lifts of ITN and back to reception for the kiddies author, she was a mousy sort of woman and clearly suffering from nerves.  ‘Oh God, I thought, this one will be trouble.’  On the way down I checked her title and that she was the right guest,.. yes it does happen that you can put the wrong guest into the wrong studio. A seem to remember an occasion when a guest for Geet Mala our Asian show wound up in a discussion about the future of railway transportation in the other studio, he gallantly discussed the advantages of off peak travel until it was discovered he had actually come to talk about a new Indian Restaurant opening in Brixton. “I want to be called by my initials,” mousy woman piped up.  “Oh” I replied. “And what are they dear?” She told me, I thought that is seriously weird, so I put my foot down.  “The thing is, that nobody has ever heard of you, this is your first book,” “yes,” she replied.  “So, we are going to call you by your proper name, so listeners can relate to you.” Mousy woman agreed, but it made her shake a little bit more.  I took her into the studio and Julia warmly greeted her, she said “My daughter read your book last night and loved it.” We both had a copy of the book, whilst Mousy lady was telling us all how she was desperate and wrote the book in some café in Glasgow or Edinburgh or somewhere, I took a look at the book.  It was your usual fairly dismal children’s book offering.  The cover had a train on it with some spotty gormless urchin in glasses in front of it. I flicked through the pages, it was mostly about magic, not my cup of tea at all.  Well the interview was over and the show runner, the poor kid who didn’t get paid but got to enjoy the ‘media experience’, had come back from his break, so I got him to dispatch Mousy Lady upstairs. I thanked her for coming in, “Oh I see you have a copy of my new book,” she said, “would you like me to sign it for you?” I answered “no” but I shall look forward to reading it later, she smiled and as the runner led her away I took the book between thumb and forefinger and threw “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling,” into the bin. So that book became a life-changing book for me.  One I realised what a pratt I had been and how rude with it too. This poor woman had come to plug her book that she had worked long and hard to write and I dismissed it, without having the good grace to read the thing.  I did years later, and it is a cracking children’s book, every bit as good as the classics, which it has now become. And two I constantly try to be a kinder person, I don’t always succeed, there is something inside of me that wants to be capricious, arch and downright rude, but I work hard to control it. Maybe I was always destined to be the hapless journalist that dissed J.K. Rowling as an author, but it did teach me a lesson .. always try to be kind.

Full transcript: Day 96 Tim Tams Friday and the I made a terrible mistake today, I try very hard now to avoid the TV news from the UK, we have enough to occupy ourselves here with events in Spain. I caught a picture of Headmaster Boris holding a packet of Tim Tams up, from what I understand following a new trade deal with Australia you will get tuppence off this less than delicious biscuit from Australia and the trade deal will end up adding only a gnats thingy to the UK GDP. Worse I then wandered into the news that the New Zealand trade deal could well have a negative effect on GDP, as things like delicious but cheap New Zealand lamb will lose its trade tariff that allows British farmers to sell their lamb at competitive prices. I scooted away as quickly as I could, off to Facebook for some friend’s kittens being naughty in his apartment in Spain. Oh no! the next post concerned the much-heralded UK tracing APP. The story that unfolded that Apple and Google make a free tracing App but the UK Government thought they could do a better job and got one of Dominic Cummings mates to cobble something together which not only didn’t work but drained everyone’s iPhone battery and cost a 120 million British pounds. That leads me to remembering the plans for ‘the word that must never be used,’ the UK government plan to increase the number of ferries crossing the channel by hiring a company that crucially had no ferries or experience of running a ferry company, but was a mate of somebodies. I turned off my social media and retired quickly to the uninterrupted view we have of the Mediterranean and a moment to reflect why we are here. It is a courageous step to leave friends, family and one’s country behind for a new life.  Population emigration research by Washington University in 2018 pointed to statistics that show up to 45% of people who leave the UK for a new life in the sun of Spain, return back to Britain. I think we were both guilty of less than complex thinking about coming to live in Spain.  We almost created a mantra of “when we are in Spain this won’t happen anymore” Train delays – I remember sitting on an overcrowded hot sweaty train, trapped once more at the, once more, broken signals at Ingatestone near Chelmsford thinking – when I am in Spain this frustrating feeling of being trapped and delayed will be a thing of the past, I can sit and just soak up the sun. How naïve, OK so there are no delayed trains here but waiting for a licence from the Town Hall to paint your bloody house, that takes more than eight weeks, the frustration and feelings are just the same as sitting on that train outside Ingatestone. Rude and unpleasant people.  Well working in London for over thirty years you learn to be a survivor, there is no time for friendliness, it is shove or be shoved, get to the front of the queue at all costs. Then  witness someone who’s way you got in, turn and call you a see you next Tuesday and wish death by cancer upon you – when I am in Spain that will be a thing of the past, because everyone is so laid back there. Naïve thought number two – it is true that the pace of life is slower here than London but tempers flare in just the same way, the swearing is in a different language and there is a deal more physicality in any dispute. But there is I would guess the same ratio of nice people and nasty people.  Some of the nasty people have also been in absolute positions of power and living in a foreign country you feel a lot less empowered than living in your own native country to contradict them. And so the naïve list goes on, the food is not better here, just different, it is a bit fresher, we have just had some delicious Mezula fish for lunch that would give British, well Icelandic, cod a run for its money, but if you fancy a Thai or good Curry, the Catholic tastes of the Spanish mean there are fewer restaurants or availability of ingredients in the supermarket than in the UK. So, this is the long way around of explaining that we live in Spain because we accept that it is a far from perfect country, just like the UK.  It has more than its fair share of absolute political twankers, if you are in doubt about what that word means look it up in an urban dictionary. OK so I think the Spanish Prime Minister would stop short at flogging Tim Tams, but he has bloated his parliamentary departments to quite an obscene level in light of the crisis that Spain and the world finds itself in. And his Deputy seems to be channelling Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, after a political lifetime decrying the bourgeoise lifestyles of his opponents, the moment he got into power he suffered major amnesia and moved himself into a mansion in an exclusive part of Madrid, every time I see what my friend just calls “ponytail man” I keep hearing “four legs good, two legs bad,” in the back of my mind. So bottom line, if you are fed up of the stupid and downright crazy things the UK Government are up to right now, and you think moving into the sunshine of Spain you are somehow going to avoid the realities of life, then you are mistaken. You will, mostly enjoy better weather and a different pace of life.  Or you might find you openly hate the culture, if you listen to some of the Ex-Pat, [hate that word], drunks sitting in English bars along the Costas, you would think that the Spanish are good for nothing and that Blighty is the greatest place to live in the world. I remember a good Spanish friend saying to me, “If they, those Engleesh drunks, think England is so great, why are they living here in Spain?” I know why we are here, because we love the place, warts and all, the good times and the bad, just like we still love the UK, warts and Tim Tams at tuppence off an all.

Transcript: Day 95 Bonfire night Thursday and now just a few days before everything un locks, the end of the Alarma and the new normal will start on Monday, many Spanish can go back to work and get the working week off to.. er, well er, a two day start, because next Wednesday “we are having a Fiesta” The Fiesta of San Juan to be precise, the beginning of summer and those long summer holidays, after all we have all been working so hard these last few weeks … erm! San Juan is when hordes of Spanish all head to the beach for a party, it will last all night and bonfires are lit all along the coast on the beach, there will be a lot of food and drink, all in throwaway plastic containers, barbecues and plenty of booze, that will also come in plastic containers and tin cans. The idea is that the bonfires of San Juan are said to purify and protect, and ward of evil spirits, also at midnight, Spanish time, you go to the water’s edge and wash your face in the sea water to bring you good luck and hope for the future. The following morning all along the beautiful coastline it looks like there has been an illegal rave, the devastation and litter is truly appalling.  The crowds must leave the beach by 10am that following day so that a massive council run cleaning operation can come along and mitigate the damage done to the eco system. By removing hundreds of tons of rubbish off the beaches. They are often too late, and we have the pleasure of watching swathes of plastic litter pass by us on the sea. For two years running the locals decided, why bother bringing your own firewood to the beach when you can rip up the disabled wooden walkways for wheelchairs and set fire to them, at the expense of the local council and of course those who are disabled. Ok, ok, I am painting a rather bleak picture here and there are some who bring their own bin bags and do clear up, but some don’t and as I have mentioned the Spanish do like a smoke, so hundreds and thousands of butt ends are discarded on the beach.  Every cigarette has a small ring of plastic at the filter end, so they also need to be cleared up off the beach too. At least twice a year usually at the end of summer we have beach cleaning volunteers who go along the beaches collecting cigarette ends and other summer holiday detritus left by visitors and tourists. This year, San Juan is cancelled, no bonfires, no plastic waste out at sea, no drunken behaviour ripping up disabled boardwalks, also no income for the bars and restaurants that stay open all night. Covid19 measures mean instead of spending money on cleaning up the beaches, the council is spending money on policing the beaches and closing them ALL across the whole of Spain next Wednesday. I have been to a San Juan festival and enjoyed the event, but there is a great deal of young drunken behaviour, a lot of drugs and booze, not the family event we were expecting so came away soon after midnight. I think what has happened, well at least here, is that what should be a great family festival has been hijacked by a club 18 to 30 mob who just go wild and trash the place.  We have seen it happen so many times in the UK. When we lived in Essex, we were very close to a rather attractive park with a museum, there were ornamental flower beds and lovely stretches of grass to enjoy a summers day on. Except that summer picnics have turned into a competition to scatter as much plastic and other waste around and then leave it on the grass.  I know speaking like this makes me into a bit of a Victor Meldrew. I am not. I like a good party, I like to let my hair down, if I had any, but I can’t bear to leave a mess behind, and I don’t understand why you would want to do that? Thursday and the economic figures are starting to emerge all over Europe detailing the cost to the economies of Lockdown.  In Germany there was a 13% decline in economic activity, here in Spain a whopping 34% fall in output. Spain is hit harder as it has a reliance on the services industry.  And almost 95% of Spanish businesses are small to medium enterprises, here where we live, they are often family run. It was another of those big culture shocks to discover so few national chains of anything other than McDonalds or Burger King, I swear the first business on the moon will be one of those two. The Spanish Government is expecting a drop in GDP of 9.2% this year, I personally think they are way out and GDP has fallen a lot more than that. There is to be EU money made available to help Spain but some in the EU are worried that the left-wing Government will spend the money on ideological schemes rather than re-igniting the business sector. The conservatives in Spain believe that the money should be spent on digitising Spain, making more of the administration online and easier to work, create jobs with re-industrialisation to provide what they describe as ‘real jobs’. The good news is neither side want cuts or austerity. The bad news is as usual left and right are both at logger heads as to how the money should be spent. One thing is for certain though, they are not alone, the whole world is sharing in the same challenges and that getting us out of lockdown will be a far more complicated process than putting us in.

Transcript: Day 94 Assassination Wednesday and the excitement cannot be contained, I am going shopping with Chris, well to be honest he doesn’t want me in the first shop, - Mercadona, he tells me he has a routine now and that doesn’t include me putting unsuitable items in the shopping trolley. Never mind I am going to the Post Office instead, to pick up a parcel, the Post Office is only open between 8.30am and 2.30pm, the local office is tiny and usually packed, as many Spanish still come and pay their bills and do very complicated administrative things. I arrived to discover the entrance was hidden behind some railing and the pavement outside was in a complete mess.  I followed the arrows around to the back entrance, I am guessing the temporary entrance that will take you through the sorting room/office. Just ahead of me is curly lady, she is our local Postal worker and delivers the mail to the Estate. But as I reach the door the sign on the door says closed at 2pm.  Madre Mia I said to her waving my hands Spanish style.  She explained that the Mayor had dug the road up and it meant, for some reason, they were closing early. Then she said to me the name of our Estate. Yes, “Un a momento” she took my parcel slip and disappeared behind the door.  A moment later she was back with my parcel.  “Mucho gracias” I said “De nada.” So I have my parcel and I have time to annoy Chris in Mercadona.  I found him pawing the fish, “Oh” he said, “I thought you were going to the Post Office?” Now doused in alcohol and wearing my plastic gloves to get in, I thought I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity and “helped” Chris with the shopping until he got so annoyed, he told me to go back and sit in the car. But at least the whole shopping trip this week had a bit of normality about it. We drove out of the town along Avienda Frederico Garcia Lorca.  If you do a Google Map search you will find many roads named after Lorca, he was probably one of the greatest writers and poet of his time and is as important probably as Cervantes, Gaudí and well almost Picasso too. He came to a rather unfortunate end. Garcia Lorca was born in 1898 in a little town called Fuente Vaqueros, about an hour’s drive from here, his dad was making good money from the Sugar Cane growing industry.  Sugar Cane was a big thing here and a lot of the plains surrounding us now were given over to growing the stuff.  By our gym is the old Sugar Factory, that supplied sugar to Spain and beyond. The factory is wreck but is slowly being restored, a couple of times the place has been used as a film location, standing in for Cuba, I believe once. Lorca mother was a teacher, when he was eleven the family moved into Granada so that he could attend a city school. From there onto University.  From the age of six he took piano lessons and became interested in Spanish folklore. Rather like the Bloomsbury Set the bright young things of Granada met in a local Café, Café Alameda.  By 1917 Lorca was writing books and Lorca’s parents were persuaded to let him attend the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. There he made friends with Salvador Dalí and many other creative artists that would become influential throughout Spain. Then came a play, that got laughed off the stage, it was the tale of an impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, but that did not deter Lorca. In a career just a brief 19 years Frederico Garcia Lorca revitalised Spanish Poetry, helped to start the second Golden Age of Spanish Theatre and became one of the most important Spanish poet and playwright of the 20th century, and his work still influences writers and artists to this day. Unfortunately for Lorca he was Gay, I say that because the Nationalist Forces led by Franco in1936 were not awfully keen on Gays or socialists and he was both, so he ended up being arrested and imprisoned without a trial. On the night of August 18th or maybe 19th, nobody bothered to keep a record, Lorca was driven to a remote hillside somewhere outside of Granada and shot dead. I say somewhere because so far nobody has been able to find his remains, he might be in the mass grave in Viznar. So, Spain managed to assassinate possibly one of the greatest poets and playwrights of the age all in the name of Nationalism, deciding without a trial he was a danger to the cause. Franco never recognised that Lorca had been bumped off by his Guardia and the whole affair remained an irritation abroad until Francos death. Those dark days are over and since the death of Franco, Spanish towns and cities have been falling over themselves to name roads, squares, museums and the like after Garcia Frederico Lorca