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...