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.)

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?

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.

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*