Fat chance

What's this? You get nothing for weeks on end and then, suddenly, the bloke can't shut up? Well, I said a couple of entries back that Christmas was going to be a bit different for me this year, and so it's proving. I'm writing about stuff I haven't seen or experienced before, and today has provided such a thing.

Today, as on every December 22nd, they draw El Gordo, 'the fat one', the colloquial name for the special Christmas lottery that Spaniards go crazy for every year - see previous entry on the matter. Now I'm familiar with the lottery, and many of the customs associated with it, of course. But I'm usually back in the UK by now, so I've never seen it actually drawn. 

Can't be complicated, right? Just get the machine to do its thing, announce the numbers, job done, surely? Course not. This is a big deal here. As with pretty much every raffle I've ever seen in Spain, it's drawn by 'innocentes' - children. They'll have no association with the promotion or running of the lottery and are above suspicion when it comes to drawing and announcing the winning numbers. This is how everything from the ham at the local football club to the biggest domestic lottery prize in the country is drawn; it's pretty much always a child.

Fair enough. So you get kids to draw the balls. Still can't take long, right? Wrong. This is the biggest lottery draw of the year and there are a lot of prizes. So the draw, live on TV and streamed on the internet, starts at about 9am and goes on until about noon. And the kids sing the numbers, and the associated prizes, as they come out. Here's a recent one, with one of the jackpots and the last number in the sequence being announced. They're showing the balls to the judges, and there's excitement in the crowd, for the size of the prize. 

So this morning, you go into a shop, or a bar, or the tobacconists, and you can hear the kids singing this. It's everywhere. Can you imagine that, for three hours? I don't care how much you like kids, or how much you believe in the luck of the Gordo, that's got to get on your nerves eventually. (Or in my case, in about twenty seconds).

And how the Spaniards believe. Even at €20 per ticket for a chance to win a tenth of any prize that ticket's number may throw up, they buy them from everywhere they go in normal years, to get different numbers from different parts of the country. They exchange them as gifts. And they ignore the fact that on any given week, the jackpot for EuroMillions is larger, the prize is only shared if anybody else has chosen exactly the same numbers as you, and the tickets are an eighth of the cost. 

But this is as much about tradition as genuine chances, as they all know, of course. Nevertheless, you wouldn't put up with three hours of that if some small part of you wasn't listening for your numbers, just in case. Well I wouldn't anyway. "Don't come to the bar after twelve," a bar-owning mate told me cheerfully this morning. "I'll be closing forever 'coz I'll be rich."

----

¿Qué es esto? ¿No hay nada durante semanas y luego, de repente, el tio no se puede callar? Bueno, dije un par de entradas atrás que la Navidad iba a ser un poco diferente para mí este año, y eso está demostrando. Estoy escribiendo sobre cosas que no he visto o experimentado antes, y hoy ha proporcionado tal cosa.

Hoy, como cada 22 de diciembre, sortean El Gordo, el nombre coloquial de la lotería especial de Navidad que los españoles enloquecen cada año - ver entrada anterior al respecto. Ahora estoy familiarizado con la lotería, y muchas de las costumbres asociadas a ella, por supuesto. Pero normalmente ya estoy de vuelta en el Reino Unido, así que nunca he visto que se sortee. 

No puede ser complicado, ¿verdad? Sólo hacer que la máquina haga lo suyo, anunciar los números, trabajo hecho, seguramente. Por supuesto que no. Esto es algo importante. Como con casi todas las rifas que he visto en España, son sorteadas por "inocentes" - niños. No tienen ninguna relación con la promoción o el funcionamiento de la lotería y están fuera de sospecha cuando se trata de sortear y anunciar los números ganadores. Así es como se sortea todo, desde el jamón del club de fútbol local hasta el mayor premio de la lotería nacional del país; casi siempre es un niño.

Me parece justo. Así que haces que los niños sacan las bolas. Todavía no puede tomar mucho tiempo, ¿verdad? No. Este es el mayor sorteo de lotería del año y hay muchos premios. Así que el sorteo, en vivo por TV y en streaming por internet, comienza a las nueve de la mañana y dura hasta el mediodía. Y los niños cantan los números, y los premios asociados, a medida que salen. Aquí hay uno reciente, con uno de los botes y el último número de la secuencia anunciado. Están mostrando las bolas a los jueces, y hay emoción en la multitud, por el tamaño del premio. 

Así que esta mañana, entras en una tienda, o en un bar, o en los estancos, y puedes oír a los niños cantando esto. Está en todas partes. ¿Te imaginas eso, durante tres horas? No me importa cuánto te gusten los niños, o cuánto creas en la suerte del Gordo, eso tiene que ponerte de los nervios eventualmente. (O en mi caso, en unos veinte segundos).

Y cómo creen los españoles.Incluso a 20 euros por boleto para tener la oportunidad de ganar un décimo de cualquier premio que el número de ese boleto pueda ganar, los compran en todos los lugares a los que van en años normales, para obtener diferentes números de diferentes partes del país.  Los intercambian como regalos.E ignoran el hecho de que en una semana cualquiera, el premio mayor de EuroMillions es mayor, el premio sólo se comparte si alguien más ha elegido exactamente los mismos números que tú, y los boletos cuestan una octava parte del costo. 

Pero esto es tanto una tradición como una oportunidad genuina, como todos saben, por supuesto. Sin embargo, no aguantarías tres horas de eso si una pequeña parte de ti no estuviera escuchando tus números, por si acaso. Bueno, no lo haría de todos modos. "No vengas al bar después de las doce," me dijo alegremente un amigo que es dueño de un bar esta mañana. "Cerraré para siempre porque seré rico."

Dalek proofreaders: Hyphenate! Hyphenate! Hyphenate!

I use Blogger to write these things in part because it has one of the simplest interfaces to use among the blogging sites. I'm far from a techie, and suspect I don't use even a quarter of its potential. The result – all grey, just text and a few pics, is hardly kaleidoscopic but suits my abilities, and I suspect my character, well enough.

It's not perfect, though. Speaking as a professional proofreader and occasional copy editor, there are limitations I've not yet found my way around that drive me crazy, though you may not even notice them. There's an example already in this entry. See that dash between 'result' and 'all' above? That's a hyphen. I typed it as a spaced en dash, but Blogger reproduces it automatically as a hyphen, and there's nothing I can do about it. (Or if there is I'm ignorant of the fix.)

'So what?' you're no doubt thinking. 'What the hell is a spaced en dash anyway?' And in a world where there are much bigger problems, you're right, of course. But to some people - people who look normal on the outside and live and work among you, unnoticed - it elicits either a sigh of resignation, a prickly feeling of indignation or even outrage. I've had to defend myself on my use of dashes here against a proofreading colleague in London back in the day. To some people, this stuff matters. 

I offer the comments thread on this piece about the Associated Press, one of the standard-bearers for correct application of punctuation and writing style, going back on a change in their guidance on the use of hyphens, as a clear example of the sort of response this can elicit in some people:

Check out the comments thread. 

My personal favourite is the second one. "Please. I have a family." This, and, "I just told my copy desk. They're planning a riot." both provoked a laugh of recognition when I read them. The people who wrote those comments, and their spiritual siblings like me, have to put up with a daily assault of incorrectly spelled and/or wrongly punctuated text from all quarters, even from formerly reliable institutions like the BBC, without exploding in fury and setting fire to everything. Hence the title of this entry. If it were up to me, I'd apply Dalek discipline to these miscreants and exterminate them. 

But no. We just have to accept that we're in a shrinking minority and get on with it. At least until the glorious revolution comes and the so-called pedants take over. I shall train my Dalek weaponry on the non-believers, and it won't be the one that looks like a toilet plunger, I assure you. I can only hope that, when that time comes and we're in charge, none of the ruling punctuation elite ever see this blog. They'd see those spaced hyphens and I'd be one of the first against the wall...

(No voy a traducir esta entrada. No tendrá sentido en español.)

Doing things differently

It's just over a week away now, and like everybody else, Christmas this year is going to be a bit different for me. A lot different, actually. With my mother being in a high-risk group, and cases rising fast in the south-east of England, it's just not worth the risk I'd be putting her in, or the possible enforced ten-day quarantine that may be necessary on arrival. There's also the possible faff of the journey home - I'll come back to that.

So, for the first time in my life, I'll be spending Christmas outside of the UK. I've mentioned in these entries before, the difference between the overwhelming Christmas lights, decorations, etc, in the retail streets of Britain, compared to the rather more understated way it's done here. I don't know if that's the same back home this year - it hardly seems worth decorating streets that are largely going to remain empty - but this year's decoration of the plaza mayor, the main square, in the village, is rather good in my view.

A metal 'tree' built around the
square's fountain. I like it.

    There's also a competition this year for the
     best window display in the local shops,
     and a big push to get people to spend
     locally, both brainchildren of my other
     half. Since we can't really go anywhere,
     like many other people, backing local
     business has become an essential element
     in the fight to keep the economy alive
     when we eventually emerge from this
     pandemic.

     There are some non-window displays that
     say a lot about the culture here as well.
     To a Brit, a wide selection of beers at the
     local boozer is more or less a given,
     especially these days with craft beers
     being hugely popular. While I'm lucky
     that there are a couple of bars with
     a decent selection of beers in the
     village, it's by no means the norm here. 

Frankly, Estrella Galicia is king. It's absolutely ubiquitous - their branding is everywhere and almost all the bars sell it, the majority on draught. It far outsells any other beer here and some people won't drink any other beer. I could, rather than just explain its place in the culture here at such length, show you this, adorning one of the bars:

Mmm. Beer.

We are at least free to go to the bars at the moment, being pretty free of Covid cases locally, and therefore at liberty to enjoy such invention.

There are differences, too, in how Christmas is actually celebrated in the home. There's no one, standard dish that most people eat - no annual turkey genocide across Spain. The big Christmas meal itself is often lamb or shellfish, or both, and it's eaten on Christmas Eve. Dec 25th is for going out for a drink, or mass, of course, and isn't that big a deal here. Many people don't exchange presents until Jan 6th, the day the three kings arrive. Got to be a killer wait for the kids, and no sooner have you got your hands on your new Scalextric than you're back to school again. Ouch. Me and Cris will be exchanging presents UK style, on Dec 25th - neither of us have that much patience.

Then there's New Year's Eve. Now as many who know me will already know, I don't like NYE much. I've never understood what people are celebrating, particularly - the change of one day to another happens every 24 hours. And while I certainly understand that many people will be delighted to see the back of 2020, for me this year, midnight on NYE marks the moment I lose EU citizenship and Brexit finally happens. This is singularly depressing, and the chaos of the talks and the complete lack of clarity about what's going to happen on so many issues demonstrate all too clearly that, straight away, it's going to show what a shit idea it was from the start. It's also, going back to what I said earlier, another reason not to fly to the UK right now. What's it going to be like, on top of all the Covid crap, flying back into the EU from the UK in the first few days after we leave - is anybody going to know how to deal with it? Which queues? Do we have to pay that extra £7 tax thingy that's been mooted? Do we even have the right to travel there at all, not being on the Covid safe list? No thanks - I'll wait a while.

But, anyway, back to what I was saying. Most people in the UK go out, pay to get into a bar they can usually access for free, wait in six-deep-at-the-bar queues to get pissed, cuddle their mates and strangers at midnight, and crash home shit-faced in the early hours, right? Not here. Standard form here is to have dinner at home, 9 or 10 o'clock. You celebrate the midnight moment by stuffing a dozen grapes down your neck before the chimes are out, then go out, around 1am. Most people knock it on the head around 11am. This year, the bars have to shut at 1.30am, so many bar owners are expecting most people to not bother going out at all. A major departure from the usual habit will be required to fill the bars even to their current limited capacities.

However you ultimately end up celebrating the whole show this year, have as merry a one as possible. Be safe, and may 2021 not be the shit-storm that the outgoing year has been. I'm off to watch Muppet Christmas Carol.

-

Falto poco más de una semana, y como para todo el mundo, la Navidad de este año va a ser un poco diferente para mi. Muy diferente, en realidad. Con mi madre en un grupo de alto riesgo, y los casos aumentando rápidamente en el sudeste de Inglaterra, no merece la pena correr el riesgo en el que la pondría, o la posible cuarentena de diez dias que ha ser necesaria. También está el posible lio del viaje de vuelta a casa. Volveré a hablar de esto mas adelante. Asi que, por primera vez en mi vida, pasaré la Navidad fuera del Reino Unido.

Ya he mencionado en este blog, la diferencia entre las abrumadores luces navideñas, decoraciones, etc., en las calles comerciales de Gran Bretaña, en comparación con la forma más discreta en que se hace aqui. No sé si es lo mismo en Inglaterra este año - no parece que valga la pena decorar las calles que en gran parte van a permanecer vacias - pero la decoración de este año de la plaza mayor en el pueblo es un espectáculo, en mi opinión.

Un árbol de metal construido alrededor
de la fuente de la plaza, con luces
por todas partes. Me gusta.

  También hay un concurso este año para
  el mejor escaparte de las tiendas locales,
  y un gran impulso para conseguir que
  la gente gaste dinero en los establecimientos
  locales. Ya que no podemos ir a ninguna
  parte, apoyar a la comunidad local y a los
  negocios locales, se ha convertido en un
  elemento esencial en la lucha por mantener
  la economía viva cuando finalmente
  salgamos de esta pandemia. 

  Para un británico, una amplia selección
  de cervezas en los bares es más o menos
  un hecho, especialmente en estos días con
  las cervezas artesanales siendo
  enormemente populares. Aunque tengo
  suerte que hay un par de bares con una
  seleccion decente de cervezas en el pueblo,
  no es de ninguna manera la norma aqui.

Francamente, Estrella Galicia es el rey. Su presencia es casi absoluta - su marca esta en todas partes y casi todos los bares la venden, la mayoría en barril. Se vende much más que cualquier otra cerveza aqui y algunas personas no beben ninguna otra cerveza. Podría, en lugar de explicar su lugar en la cultura de aquí tan extensamente, mostrarles esto, adornando uno de los bares:

Mmm. Cerveza.

Somos al menos libres de ir a los bares en este momento, estando bastante libres de casos Covid localmente, y por lo tanto en libertad de disfrutar de tal invento.

También hay diferencias en la forma en que se celebra la Navidad en casa. No hay un solo plato estándar que la mayoría de la gente coma, no hay un genocidio de pavos en toda España. La gran comida de Navidad en si es a menudo cordero o marisco, o ambos, y se come en Nochbuena. El 25 de diciembre is para salir a tomar algo, o a misa, por supuesto, y no es gran cosa aquí. Mucha gente no intercambia regalos hasta el 6 de enero, el día en que llegan los tres reyes. La espera de los niños debe ser mortal, y tan pronto como tengas en tus manos tu nuevo Scalextric, volverás a la escuela. Ouch. Cris y yo intercambiaremos regalos al estilo del Reino Unido, el 25 de diciembre. Ninguno de los dos tiene tanta paciencia.

Luego está la víspera de Año Nuevo. Como muchos de los que me conocen ya sabrán, no me gusta mucho celebrar el fin de año. Nunca he entendido lo que la gente esta celebrando, en particular - el cambio de un día a otro ocurre cada 24 horas. Y aunque ciertamente entiendo que mucha gente estará encantada de ver el final del 2020, para mi este año, la medianoche en fin de año marca el momento en que pierdo la ciudadanía de la UE y Brexit finalmente es una realidad. Esto es singularmente deprimente, y el caos de las conversaciones y la completa falta de claridad sobre lo que va a suceder en tantos temas demuestran con demasiada claridad que, de inmediato, va a mostrar la idea de mierda que fue desde el principio.

También es, volviendo a lo que dije antes, otra razón para no volar al Reino Unido en este momento. ¿Como será, además de toda la mierda de Covid, volar de vuelta a la UE desde el Reino Unido en los primeros días después de que no vamos? ¿Que colas? ¿Tenemos que pagar esa tasa extra de siete libras de impuestos que ha sido discutida? ¿Tenemos siquiera el derecho de viajar allí, sin estar en la lista de seguridad de Covid? No, gracias. Esperaré un poco.

Pero, de todos modos, volviendo a lo que estaba diciendo. La mayoría de la gente en el Reino Unido sale, paga entrar en un bar que normalmente puede acceder de forma gratuita, espera en colas de seis en el bar para emborracharse, abraza a sus compañeros y desconocidos a medianoche, y se queda en casa con cara de mierda a primera hora, ¿verdad? 

Aqui no. La forma estándar aqui es cenar en casa a las 9 o 10 en punto. Celebras el momento de la medianoche metiéndote una docena de uvas en el cuello antes de que suenen las campanas, y luego sales, alrededor de la 1 de la madrugada. La mayoría vulve a casa alrededor de las 11 de la mañana.

Este año, los bares tienen que cerrar a la 1.30 de la madrugada, así que muchos dueños de bares esperan que la mayoría de la gente ni se molesta in salir. Se requerirá un cambio importante en el habito habitual para llenar los bares incluso con su limitada capacidad actual.

Sea cual sea la forma en que termines celebrando todo el espectáculo este año, que sea lo más alegre posible. Tengan "sentidiño", y que el 2021 no sea el desastre que ha sido el año que se va. Me voy a ver el Cuento de Navidad de los Teleñecos.

(Gracias a Cristina por su ayuda con la traducción.)

2020 vision

Some years seem, for whatever reason, to develop their own character. It is, of course, merely how we come to label and later remember them, but that doesn't make those characteristics feel any less real at the time. Just a few from my lifetime, at least as I remember them:

The long, hot summer of 1976.

The bitter fury and division of the miners' strike in 1984.

Famine, and Live Aid, in 1985.

The Labour landslide of 1997, ending so many years of Tory government. Portillo's defeat speech and Paxman's "You can't even hold Hove!" (And more personally, the fight to keep my football club alive which came to a head that year.)

My father's death, and the startling wave of celebrity deaths, in 2016.

There will be others I've forgotten for now, and many people will have different views of the same year if something significant happened in their lives. But pretty much everybody is going to look back on 2020 with the same general view, I think. It's been shit by more or less any measure. About the only generally good thing I can recall from this year so far was that, in terms of the weather, we had a great summer. At least those people lucky enough to have some outdoor space were able to enjoy some sun while they were under quarantine at home.

The year's not over yet, of course. Somehow, from somewhere, I've dredged sufficient optimism to choose to believe that it may yet, in its final couple of months, have a parting gift for many of us. Tomorrow the United States goes to the polls (those millions who haven't already voted, at any rate) in an election that could yet gift us the chance to look back on at least one day of this wretched year and feel a warm glow.

They might, just might, chuck out that racist, misogynistic, egomaniacal, half-witted, climate-change denying, dictator-loving, pig-faced, divisive crook and replace him with... well, another old, white man. But at least a functioning adult, politically experienced, with a young, female, mixed-race running mate. Who'd become President in the event Biden's age catches up with him.

Gotta be honest, though. What I said about years having characters? The outcome that most fits with this year's character is that Trump wins again and we get four more years of that hateful see-you-next-Tuesday. Or it's close, and he drags it through the courts for months, adding a presidential vacuum to an already catastrophic response to the pandemic over there.

Come on, 2020. Just do us this one thing, eh? Please?

The traditional image of Old Father Time, his work done, handing over contentedly to the youthful, following year.     La imagen tradicional del Viejo Padre Tiempo, su trabajo hecho, entregando con satisfacción al año joven siguiente.

And 2020's version. Y la versión 2020.

(Disculpa mi español!)

Algunos años parecen, por cualquier razón, desarrollar su propio carácter. Por supuesto, es simplemente como llegamos a etiquetarlas y luego recordarlas, pero eso no hace que esas características se sientan menos reales en ese momento. Sólo algunas de mi vida, al menos tal como las recuerdo:

El largo y caluroso verano de 1976.

La amarga furia y la división de la huelga de los mineros en 1984.

La hambruna, y Live Aid, en 1985.

La victoria de los laboristas en 1997, que puso fin a tantos años de gobierno tory. El discurso de la derrota de Portillo y el de Paxman "¡Ni siquiera puedes sostener el Hove!" (Y más personalmente, la lucha por mantener vivo mi club de fútbol que llegó a su fin ese año.)

La muerte de mi padre, y la sorprendente ola de muertes de celebridades, en 2016.

Habrá otras que he olvidado por ahora, y muchas personas tendrán diferentes puntos de vista sobre el mismo año si algo significativo sucedió en sus vidas. Pero casi todo el mundo va a mirar hacia atrás en 2020 con la misma visión general, creo. Ha sido una mierda más o menos en cualquier medida. Lo único bueno que recuerdo de este año hasta ahora es que, en términos de clima, tuvimos un gran verano. Al menos las personas que tuvieron la suerte de tener un espacio al aire libre pudieron disfrutar del sol mientras estaban en cuarentena en casa.

El año aún no ha terminado, por supuesto. De alguna manera, desde algún lugar, he sacado suficiente optimismo para elegir creer que aún puede, en sus últimos meses, tener un regalo de despedida para muchos de nosotros. Mañana los Estados Unidos van a las urnas (esos millones que aún no han votado, en cualquier caso) en una elección que podría darnos la oportunidad de mirar hacia atrás al menos un día de este desdichado año y sentir un cálido resplandor.

Podrían, simplemente podrían, echar a ese racista, misógino, ególatra, imbécil, negador del cambio climático, amante de los dictadores, cara de cerdo, ladrón divisivo y reemplazarlo por... bueno, otro viejo hombre blanco. Pero al menos un adulto funcional, con experiencia política, con una pareja joven, femenina y mestiza. Que se convertiría en Presidente en caso de que la edad de Biden lo alcance.

Tengo que ser honesto, sin embargo. Lo que dije acerca de los años teniendo personajes? El resultado que más encaja con el personaje de este año es que Trump gana de nuevo y tenemos cuatro años más de ese odioso hijo de puta. O está cerca, y lo arrastra por los tribunales durante meses, añadiendo un vacío presidencial a una ya catastrófica respuesta a la pandemia de allí.

Vamos, 2020. Sólo haznos una cosa, ¿eh? Por favor...

Karma's a bitch

No prizes for guessing the subject of this entry from its title. The news that the Trumps have contracted Coronavirus is exactly as surprising as the fact that the first presidential 'debate' turned into farce, with one of the participants in particular keener on a chimps' tea party than actually engaging in debate. (Always a potential problem when one of the candidates is nobody's idea of a great public speaker and the other is barely capable of stringing a coherent sentence together. Wonder if that came up in the producers' planning meetings?)

Anyway, now the next debate is in doubt thanks to Trump contracting a virus that just a week ago he told people 'not to worry about' because it 'affects virtually nobody', only the 'elderly and those with heart conditions'. 208,000 fatalities in the States strongly suggests otherwise, but don't worry, because he also said they're 'rounding the turn' of the pandemic, and has criticised his opponent Biden for wearing a mask and not gathering large numbers of people together at campaign rallies.

Now I don't believe in karma, but it's the only word that adequately stands as a synecdoche for what I feel is going on right now. And I know I'm hardly alone in that feeling, if my limited view of social media is anything to go by. I try to be a decent person when I hear news like this about somebody for whom I feel genuine antipathy – see my entry on Thatcher's death for a similar conscience wrestle some time ago. But Trump makes it very, very, very difficult to wish him a recovery. No, strike that – he makes it impossible. Even when Boris Johnson was hospitalised with Covid, I didn't want the man to die. I hoped, instead, that he'd learn from it and come out with a renewed appreciation of the value of the NHS. Fat chance, of course, but that was nonetheless my feeling at the time.

Now I don't want Trump to die either, but the reasons are rather less noble. I don't want him becoming some kind of political martyr to the extremists, climate-change deniers, MAGA dickheads and ultra-conservative right that he represents. I don't want those of his followers who believe the virus is a Chinese-engineered biological weapon to have any further 'evidence' for their bizarre claims. And I don't want any kind of sympathy that may be generated for the man if he gets properly ill to be converted into votes. 

So despite my glee at the entirely appropriate condition in which he finds himself, and despite that fact that if he comes out of it without having been seriously ill, it will add fuel to his 'don't worry about it' line, I'm in the awkward position of having to hope he recovers quickly enough that he can't make political capital out of it. Better he comes out of it looking stupid (sorry; more stupid) than he comes out of it looking like some kind of tough-nut 'fighter'.

This year has been comfortably the worst that many millions of people can ever remember. In every corner of the globe, whether it's forest fires, the pandemic, refugee crises, the ongoing rise of the extreme right, increasingly extreme weather events, Brexit looming, human sacrifice or dogs and cats living together (one for the Ghostbusters fans there), it's just been a complete shit-show from the fucking start. It may yet, though, have one positive note to end on, or almost end on.

I'll tell you what, 2020. You give us the gift of a Biden victory on November 3rd – a clear victory that can't be dragged through the courts for six months while Trump takes to squatting in the Oval Office – and we'll let bygones be bygones, eh?

Trouble at mill

I wrote in a previous entry about my experience of voting in local elections here and how it was a much more direct kind of process than back home, with the votes being counted in front of you by people you know, the candidates including people you know, etc. In that post I mentioned that people tend to talk not about the party they're voting for but the person. Well recent, quite startling, political events locally have served to disavow any doubts I may have had as to the importance of the parties in people's thinking when they vote.

There has been, dear reader, serious trouble at the Town Hall. Now partly because feelings are running high and I prefer to present what's been happening as neutrally as possible, and partly because I simply don't know enough of the ins and outs to offer an opinion with any confidence, what I'm going to write here is merely what's happened as I understand it. It is not a view on who's right, wrong, crooked, straight, etc. I simply don't know.

I said at the time to think of the PP as the Conservatives, PSOE as Labour and BNG as a sort of Galician Plaid Cymru. BNG had retained the mayoralty by dint of working with PSOE in a council where no party had a majority. Therefore the incumbent mayor, a tall and loquacious chap by the name of Secundino Fernández, retained the role. Today, however, he was removed from that position in a motion of censure at a rowdy extraordinary council meeting. I'll come back to this meeting later. It seems that two of the three PSOE representatives have 'crossed the floor', voting with their PP counterparts to remove him from office and share the mayoralty for half each of what remains of the current electoral term.

This has been boiling for a while – it could have happened at a previous meeting but a frankly comical occurrence pushed it back. The remaining PSOE councillor, aware that in the absence of a PP councillor who was away on holiday she suddenly held the balance of the vote in her hands (this bit I may have wrong, for which I beg forgiveness from both her and anybody in Viana reading this if so), sprang to her feet mid-meeting and ran from the room shouting that her cows had escaped and she had to go and deal with them. (This bit I don't have wrong. Everybody in the village who wasn't at that meeting has seen the video!) This does not, I imagine, happen in too many councils back home.

Locals who are against the two who've crossed the floor, or are supporters of Secundino, have made their feelings clear. Stickers have appeared on bins, lamp-posts and walls around the village commenting on what's going on. Posters have been tied to bridges and fences. These posters and stickers say that the two have been paid to cross the floor – critics of the two say that their motivations are greed, not politics. BNG supporters say that the current administration's achievements are manifest. The PP and PSOE councillors counter that the mayor's style is dictatorial and he's impossible to work with. There's a large gulf between these two positions and it made for an extremely raucous pleno (meeting) as the deed was done at high noon today.

I don't know how many people attend a typical pleno. Some make a point of being at as many as possible, but the Casa de la Cultura where it's held is certainly not full for all of them. Today it was as packed as social distancing allowed, and some 250 people were viewing a live internet feed. A total of maybe 300 people viewing one way or another is the equivalent of a town of, say, Basingstoke's size having around 15,000 people attending a council meeting either in person or online. There were actual members of the press, both print and TV as far as I could see, in attendance.

I tuned in for a bit of it. My understanding of Gallego is still poor when it's noisy or more than one person is speaking at once, and both were the case here. A lot of shouting from an enraged audience and, according to a local barman this evening, police had to escort the two now party-less councillors concerned from the hall. (I don't know if this is true – I didn't see it.) This is all unprecedented locally.

So what now? This is the only bit on which I'm going to express an opinion. The next three years will see a mayor who represents no party now, then a PP mayor, in charge for one-and-a-half years each. I find it difficult to see how a mayor who has attracted such ire can govern effectively. This is a small town and political divisions in Spain generally, and in the pueblos in particular, can run deep. In the long run, I can only see the BNG coming out of it with a 'win', if such a thing can be gleaned from this crisis. While PP voters may not feel particularly strongly about it, anybody who voted PSOE will likely feel they've been disenfranchised. Vote PSOE, get PP is unlikely to go down well with them and in circumstances like this the electorate usually punish the party concerned. Remember the Lib Dems' vote collapsing completely after they got into bed with the Tories?

PSOE voters are not, I suspect, likely to vote PP in future. They may simply not vote of course, but the likely destination of many of those votes, if anywhere, is the BNG. We're only talking about 540-odd votes so a couple of hundred either way can make a huge difference to the make-up of the council here.

What times we live in. Cantankerous cows, COVID and Council chaos – what the hell else has 2020 got up its sleeve?

No Mus loose about this hoose

Michelle Obama is a hugely admirable person. Quite apart from her activism, reason enough to look up to her, she has no doubt faced some shit during her life and career, some of it simply because of her gender or skin colour (or both) that I can't begin to imagine. She was also, I suspect, at least partly privy to some pretty dark stuff during her time as First Lady that didn't see the light of public scrutiny.

But now we hear she is, like so many, struggling to deal with all the shit that's going on at the moment. The weight of everything has got to even somebody like her, with all her undoubted resilience, with everything she's experienced, with everything she's known about going on in the world's darkest corners in the past. It's now, the era of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; Trump, Putin, Johnson and Covid, that she lets on, publicly at least, that it's got on top of her.

She's not alone, of course, which rather belatedly brings me to the point of this entry. Thinking of how best to look up, not down in this blog, if it please Your Majesty I thought I might divert and entertain by introducing to you the world's oddest card game, Mus. (Pronounced something similar, though not exactly, like 'moose' - the vowel in this Spanish game's name sounds like it's being strangled, and isn't something you find readily in English).

Any attempt to explain the rules of this game to you is pointless. I've sat and watched, and had it explained to me, several times, and I'm still not entirely sure that I wasn't the victim of some practical joke. If that's the case, the jokers have gone to extraordinary lengths, because Mus is played so extensively here that the local newspapers publish a full page of league tables of local teams(!) But I'll at least try to explain what goes on from a spectator's point of view.

Now the first thing you have to know about any game of cards in Spain, even if you chose to play Snap, is that the cards themselves are weird. Not for Spain the normal, 2-3-4 etc up to King-Ace in four suits recognised worldwide. Oh no. They have swords, cups, coins and something resembling Captain Caveman's club. And you'll usually find that some bastard has removed all the 8s and 9s, but that nobody seems to mind. Quite what these, to me at least, innocuous numbers have done to deserve such ostracism is beyond me, but it means that a straight, if you're playing their version of rummy, goes 6-7-10. This caught me out on a number of occasions at first, and cost me several coins in lost games that I maintain I'd otherwise have won.

Anyway. You get four players, in teams of two much like bridge. They get four cards each. Then something like this happens. (Anybody who knows the game will immediately point out a string of mistakes here, but it all happens so fast and so weirdly, that it's impossible to follow). They act in turn, and the fourth player, the last to act in each round, is known as the postre, dessert, as apparently it's the weaker position. No, I don't know why:

"Big"

"No Mus"

"Pass"

"I can help you." (Winks at teammate)

"Mus"

"Pass" (Purses lips at teammate)

"Pass"

"Small" (Sticks tongue out at teammate.)

"Chica" (Player closes eyes)

"30"

"27"

"24"

"Nothing"

"Juego"

"Pass"

"Pass"

"Pass"

Then there's a complicated exchange of silver chickpeas. (No, I'm not making that bit up either. Out of the bizarre exchanges above, somehow they know who's scored what and they use silver chickpeas to keep score). Then the whole thing starts again. Oh and 3s are 10s, obviously. Can't believe I forgot that bit.

Often, at no point during what goes on above has anybody looked at or touched their cards after the first inspection. They can only change the cards they're initially dealt if all four agree, which is what the 'Mus' bit is about, apparently.

The bizarre gurning, shrugging of shoulders, sticking tongues out etc, is all part of the game and these gestures have their own rules. You can lie openly, but only by speaking. The body signals must be honest, and can be picked up by, and challenged by, the other team. You can be disqualified for using your own, made-up gestures, or for trying to deceive your opponents with them.

And the four cards you hold are used for all four rounds, despite the value of each card varying wildly from round to round. Kings (threes!) are valuable in one round but useless in another. Somehow this game, which originated in the Basque country, is hugely popular in Galicia, played all over Spain and wherever there are Spanish, particularly Basque, communities worldwide.

Now I flatter myself, dear reader, that though by no means an intellectual giant, I'm not an idiot. But this game just baffled me completely. My partner tried to teach me the game, but when I asked her to explain the rules in a more linear fashion because she was jumping around all over the place, she simply said "I can't. It doesn't work like that." We tried using dummy hands, to see which I'd keep and which throw away, using car number plates seen during long drives to stand in for the cards that I'd receive. A 3 would be a King, of course, but then do I keep the two 5s?

Even the chickpea scoring, where some chickpeas mean five points but others mean one point each, made me feel like Baldrick when Blackadder attempted to each him 'adding' using beans. (Four. Some chickpeas plus some chickpeas is four chickpeas. Points, sorry.)

Mercifully, during more normal times, most Wednesdays there's a game of Poker played in one of the village bars, using the normal Diamond-Club-Heart-Spade cards, with 8s and 9s and everything. I may lose €10 most weeks, but at least I know why I'm losing them.

Give this game a go, Mrs Obama. (I know she's an avid reader...) Its utter weirdness may at least baffle you long enough to forget all the shit that's going on for a few minutes.

Edit: My missus has just pointed out, having read and shared this, that it's not just the 3s that masquerade as another number in this game. I'd forgotten that 2s are 1s. Course they are.

Dawn of the brain dead

So we're seven weeks in to quarantine here (I think!) and we do, regrettably, finally have a confirmed case in the village. Inevitable, I suppose, given that very few corners of the globe seem to have escaped entirely. But we're both still well and if we were hardly leaving the house at all before (you're not even allowed out for exercise here) we'll be doing so even less now. Suspect we'll be discovering what the freezer's been hiding in the ice monster at the back over the next few weeks. We're coping happily enough with the confinement – though I'm really missing football now. I do confess, however, that I don't miss the weekly terror of another defeat on the inexorable slide to relegation that most weekends brought.

The reason for the title of this entry would not test the guessing capabilities of a simpleton. In a world, virtual and physical, where we're being told the Chinese created the virus deliberately, that 5G masts spread it. That it doesn't exist at all, that 'cures' can be bought on the internet. What we most needed was the planet's most powerful half-wit telling his countrymen and women to ingest bleach.

It is, of course, the press's fault – he was only being sarcastic to test their reaction. Well let's give the man way, way, way more credit than he deserves and believe him for a moment. Such a 'test' at the very least shows that this so-called politician has about as much grasp of politics as a three-year old. You can only hope that his supporters, who seem bewilderingly in thrall to this dolt, aren't stupid enough to follow his advice.

A secondary reason for the title is a piece of what (I hope at least) was poor journalism on a Spanish newspaper's website, claiming that medical staff at a hospital had been attacked by a 'fallecido' of Covid-19. This means that a dead victim of the virus attacked hospital staff. For everybody who's been waiting with something like gleeful anticipation of the zombie apocalypse, or who regard this crisis fearfully as its herald, the accuracy or otherwise of that paper's headline will be of considerable import.

Away from Trump and other horrors, the vast majority of 'normal' people continue to display patience, empathy and support for those on the front line. Just in the social media stuff I see, which is extremely limited, there are friends of my partner making medical gowns and masks in Sussex, others volunteering to help locals who can't get out to do their own shopping. The spirit of community, which in large cities is at best attenuated and at worst non-existent, has been revived most powerfully when people paradoxically are forced to stay away from each other.

I've seen a lot of messages that we can't go back to 'normal', that 'normal' was the problem. Well, yes. I'd certainly like to hope that when we slowly start to come out of this, the recent appreciation shown to key workers everywhere is converted into something a bit more concrete, that would actually confer rewards on them for their hard work and fortitude. I'd be lying, though, if I said I thought that's what would happen. The everyday worries that most people have to deal with - the mortgage, the kids, their job - will quickly barge their way to the front of most people's thinking, understandably. Brexit (remember that?) will once again dominate the news.

Of course some aspects of society will have changed - we'll all fly less, I reckon, because it's going to be a lot more expensive and people won't have the money if they were furloughed. There may also be a lot fewer airlines about. But the right won't have to pay lip service daily to the NHS and can go back to denying them pay rises and telling us how lucky we'll be to be 'independent' of the EU, though this crisis demonstrates the inter-connectedness of things in a manner which should be clear even to the stupidest individual. Stuff like this affects everybody, and would better be resisted if we prepared for it, and then fought it, together.

Be well, all.

Update - a week and a day into quarantine

So, what was going to be a 15-day stay-at-home order will now be 30 days, on pain of a €600 fine if you're stopped by the police out and about without good reason. Food shopping, going to work if you're a key worker, etc, is OK. Just being a bit stir crazy and needing to get out is not. Seeing the pictures from Bondi Beach and various places in the UK recently are very frustrating when this thing has already taken so many, and is now taking people known to me. My sincerest condolences to M, E and G for the loss of their father in Madrid. And best wishes to P for the recovery of his father, currently in hospital. This is going to get close to home for a lot of people, including some of those who were in those photos in Snowdonia, the royal parks etc. It's fucking horrible. Stay indoors, people. Seriously - they're not saying this shit for nothing.

I said to mates in a (virtual) drink last week that, in times like this, you see the best and worst in people. So looking up, not down, I'd like to beg your indulgence for a moment while I big up my own missus and some other ladies in our village who have been producing masks for staff at local hospitals, old peoples' residences etc. Now I know the score - they're not going to stop the infection on their own. But I defer to the knowledge of medical professionals here, and the nurses here have told us that not only are they helpful in a clinical environment, but there's a chronic shortage of them here. They're using disposable, paper masks, or nothing at all. Against that, cloth masks are an improvement.

My partner Cris, and others, have answered the call. She has produced hundreds of these things - working from 7am on Sunday, I think it was, through the day, pumping them out as fast as she could. The effort continues and others have joined in – shout outs to Minda, Yoli, Marián, ChuChi, Pura and anybody else I've forgotten or am unaware of, to whom my apologies, for doing the same. What started as a few masks for local nurses has spread to the hospital at a much bigger town about 45 mins away asking for them too. Hundreds are needed, pretty much anywhere that they're used.

They come in a range of looks...

Something for everyone.

My admiration for such gestures, and I've seen many others all over the place from good, selfless people who want to do something positive, is rather tempered by the fact that they're necessary at all. 

We call the everyday heroes and heroines behind these masks, and others like them, 'key workers'. They are indeed the keystones on which any functioning society is based. I know this is hardly original thinking but it's medical staff, teachers, cleaners, transport workers, food industry and chain-of-supply workers, and so on, all those people who are still working now when many others have been told not to, who hold our society up. Any structure, whether actual or abstract, is only as strong as its foundation, no matter the riches at the top. You don't build anything by starting with a 300-ton gold roof and then go about supporting it with balsa-wood and flour'n'water glue.

I haven't heard anybody yet wondering when the hedge fund managers, the currency speculators and stock market players are going to step up and keep things running. I've picked on finance but it could just as easy be, I don't know, YouTube 'influencers', fashion designers or footballers. Nothing personal against any of those people – my point is that the money is all in the wrong damn place. Cuts are routinely made to public health services and a lack of basic stuff like masks, soaps, and staff are the inevitable result, for all the lip service they're then paid by the government when they're front and centre of a crisis like this one.

You can't pay your mortgage, or build hospitals, with lip service. I'd love to believe that when (if) western society recovers from this, this imbalance will be addressed and wealth shared a bit more freely with those who have so little of it but make it possible for others 'above' them in the first place. A pipe dream, of course. You only have to look across the Atlantic so see the 'advice' the dolt in charge over there is giving to know exactly how much the people who profit from the work of others with much less money than them really grasp this reality.

Anyway. Be well, everybody. Stay home if you don't have to go out and listen to the advice of the medical professionals, not the divs selling 'cures' and other charlatans.

Spain calling, Spain calling. Reporting from quarantine.

Unlike in the UK, where money still drives Tory thinking and they won't take the necessary steps to enforce business closures because it'd cost the insurers too much*, Spain is in the first week of an Italian-style national close-down. There is no public transport, and you can be fined for leaving the house without good cause. You can go food shopping, get to the chemist or go to work if you can't work from home, but all the bars, restaurants and other shops are closed.

I know for some people, the idea of not being able to leave the house for 15 days represents some kind of hell. My missus is coping so far but will no doubt be climbing the walls with boredom before the quarantine is loosened. I however, already work from home (or anywhere with an internet connection) and being very, very far from an outdoorsman, am perfectly happy indoors. Don't get me wrong - the day before the doors were closed, it was warm and sunny here so we were out on the lake canoeing. (It snowed the following day - if the virus doesn't end us, nature will take its revenge some other way soon enough...) I enjoy getting out and doing that type of stuff as much as anybody. But I, and others like me, am going to make some excellent progress on some unfinished PS4 games in the next couple of weeks.

We've not yet been hit in the village with the sort of panic buying that has characterised the UK and the larger cities here. With so few people, there's been enough to go round so far. The shops had anticipated a run on the same stuff that's been selling out everywhere else, so the last time I went into one of the village's little shops, there were pallets of loo roll piled up in readiness. The toilet roll will become the short-hand image for this crisis when we later look back on it. I don't understand this at all - how often do most people shop for bog roll? I'd suggest it's the once-a-month big shop stock-up item at most. Why people feel the need to take 200 rolls home at a time is entirely beyond me. Are they expecting to be inside for six months? And why not toothpaste, for example? (Or has that sold out in the UK as well?)

I can sort of understand this on one level only. Some of the images here have been so close to the end-of-the-world, zombie apocalypse film shots that it's eerie. The roads out of Madrid were absolutely stationary last weekend, and the roads in entirely empty. The village filled up with people who are usually only here in August in the last few days, no doubt bringing the virus with them if it wasn't here already. (I was also guilty of this, travelling home from the UK on Feb 10th, but I was travelling to my only home and had little choice.)

The illness itself? I'm not worried for my personal well-being. The hysteria generated by some of the false 'facts', 'cures' and other shit that the internet generates is easy enough to ignore if you have an even vaguely incredulous mind. I am worried for my partner, who has asthma, and my mother, whose age and health could make it very grave for her if she gets it. But the sensible approach is to follow the (official) advice, stay indoors as much as possible and not deny people who really need them the essentials from the shops by buying as much of it as you can carry.

Speaking selfishly, the worst thing for me personally, other than the worries for my loved ones, has been the absence of sport. No scores to check, no discussion of what's happened, no relegation-panic at the latest defeat or joy at an unexpected victory. The escape that sport usually offers, which would be more welcome than ever at the moment, leaves a noticeable hole. Some people, understandably with time on their hands, have gone to some lengths to provide something for the hollow-eyed, sport-deprived addicts. I offer these as an example - I've seen these overdubbed into Spanish as well, showing that this has international appeal and stands as an outstanding piece of work, I think.

Ludicrous as it is, I'm finding these tense(!), an indication that even a small hit is hugely welcome to those of us suffering from withdrawal symptoms from the lack of sport. They've apparently put on 26,000 subscribers recently so it's not just me...

On a final, serious note, I hope that times like this will, when it's eventually over, leave a legacy of caring and thoughts for older and vulnerable people in everyone's minds, and a strong sense of guilt for those who needlessly emptied the shop shelves and left nothing for those who already have little.

I hope you and yours all stay well, and that our societies learn lessons from this.

(Edit - two ambulances have just rushed past the house with sirens blaring and lights flashing. I have never seen this before here. I didn't even know there was a second ambulance in the village. Possibly unrelated, of course, but alarming nonetheless...)


*This is exactly the sort of shit that people forgot about when they voted Tory in previously Labour heartlands during the General Election. They were so blinded by their desire to get out of the EU that they ignored, or forgot, that their livelihoods, even their lives, matter less to the monied elite than cash. This is an (entirely unforeseeable but depressingly unsurprising) example of the sort of consequences such decisions can have. *Steps down off soapbox*

People called Romans, they go the house?

Just back from a weekend seeing friends in Lugo, a small Galician city a couple of hours' drive from us. Now Lugo is not particularly well known outside of Spain, I imagine, but it boasts some extremely good reasons to visit.

Firstly, the frankly ludicrous standards of tapas that you get if you're out having a drink. Pretty much everywhere you go it's the same, to the point that I don't really know how any actual restaurants survive in the city at all. To illustrate: for breakfast this morning, I ordered your pretty standard café con leche, at around €1.50. (It may have been less, I'm not certain because it was one of a group order with other stuff). Served with that coffee, free, were two churros (long, straight, dunkable pastries made out of a doughnut dough), a decent-sized piece of bica (a delicious, light, Galician sponge cake that for some reason you're not allowed to call a cake...) and a small glass of orange juice. Freshly squeezed. There was also tortilla on the bar top – help yourself.

Evenings are even better – or worse, depending on your point of view on gluttony. The purchase of a caña, the typical small beer, and you're offered one of anything up to 20 tapas from a changeable menu on a blackboard. In one case this was a rack of ribs, in another a dinner-sized portion of spaghetti carbonara. There are also sandwiches, empanada and tortilla on the bar for everybody to help themselves. Again. It makes you wonder, to be honest, how the bars make any money in this most generous of cities. And, as I said, why there are any restaurants at all.

Lugo is also blessed with the complete circle of the original Roman wall surrounding its centre. A satellite shot here shows you the extent of this rarest, and in Europe quite possibly unique, feature. Many cities have chunks of walls left. Lugo still has the whole thing, and an impressive sight it is too. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site at the turn of the millennium.

Pic from 'Galicia Guide' website

The locals jog around its circumference and are rightly proud of this intact reminder of the genius of the ancient Romans for building, taking care to preserve their most precious tourist asset. So proud, in fact, that they hold a gigantic Roman-themed celebration, of which more in a moment, every year. I was particularly pleased with this piece of graffiti on a building inside the walls, though. I wouldn't, of course, normally condone such actions. However, when the obvious fan of Life of Brian painted this on the wall, they took local sensibilities seriously and, assuming the figure drawn on the right is the 'I', nailed the grammar:

Write it out 100 times. If it's not done before
sunrise, I'll cut your balls off...

That celebration, then. The Arde Lucus. As many as half a million people come to this city of under 100,000 inhabitants, to give you some idea of how busy and important it is. To suggest everybody 'dresses up' would be to do the thing a huge injustice. Everybody goes to extraordinary lengths, and the locals all seem to own Roman style clothing that's as close to the real thing as you could ask for. My partner's cousin, a local, has a full legionary's uniform and weaponry on proud display in his flat. Real leather, real metal, real everything. Imagine tens of thousands of people descending on the city dressed like that, (or as the local Celts, the Romans' contemporary opponents) to get pissed, eat heartily and recreate a siege of the city.

I have not yet attended this bacchanalian set-to because it often coincides with a time when we're not in Galicia for a few weeks but will certainly do so in future. Reports and photos from friends who attend regularly suggest that it's not to be missed. Terrific bunch of people, the Romans Lugoans. Terrific.

Edit: on reading this piece, my partner confirmed the coffee was €1. And that I'd forgotten the piece of ham on a slice of fresh bread that was also served with it...