Today Rulers and Prince Caspian
Day Thirty of the Spanish Lockdown, the sometimes amusing, diary of a Brit in southern Spain under the 'Alarma' - normal life has stopped.
To find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com
t is day 30 of our Spanish Lockdown and the sun has shone through the high cloud. the weather though is unseasonably cool. The traffic this morning is noticeably noisier, there has been a very slight lifting of the Lockdown to allow some industries and some construction return to work.
I have started recording my work for children's literacy, I am the computer voice for quizzes that tests whether a child has read a particular book. If they pass they can move on to the next book. I love books, I didn't always. When I went to school in the swinging sixties, teachers wore caftans and one thigh length boots and an impossibly small mini skirt that showed her teaching credentials every time she bent over to pick the chalk up from the blackboard.
In the 1960s at school we were experimented on, the grandson of the man that gave us shorthand Sir Isaac Pitman, a gentleman by the name of Sir James Pitman decided to create an Initial Teaching Alphabet, and we were to be the first children the educational authorities would try it on. The language was based on sounds, had some similarities to English but looked nothing like it.
As a result after two years at school not a single one of us could read a word of English, simple words like Exit or Entrance could have been written in hieroglyphics for all I could make out. My mother was alarmed, the school was alarmed and quietly dropped the scheme, leaving two whole years illiterate.
So I couldn't read, well I could read a crazy 1960s language invented by some knighted knob. It was frustrating and in a fit of pique I picked a book up and decided to teach myself. It was a long and painful process, asking my mother what every other word was or meant. But after that first book I read another and another, until I had read the whole of the infant school library. It wasn't that expansive and even then excluded Enid Blyton.
The school allowed me to cross the playground to the Junior School and raid their library. I think the infant school felt a sense of guilt that they had whole class loads of kids who could barely write their own name. When I eventually moved up to Junior School I was a voracious reader. Once in class I had reached an exciting part of Prince Caspian from the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis,.. Peter was about to get his head sliced off in battle.. when I was suddenly aware of my teacher Miss Hatfield standing over me.
"This is supposed to be a maths lesson.. what are you doing Campen?"
"Er reading Miss Hatfield." "Come up to the front of the class and bring 'that' book with you." The whole class watched as I walked to the front, they all knew what was coming and were, frankly looking forward to it. Miss Hatfield took the book from me and said. "This will be returned to the school library, you will not be allowed to just help yourself to books anymore."
She then opened her drawer and took out her wooden ruler. "Hold out your left hand and make a fist" For an elderly spinster she would have made a very fine bowler at cricket. She rose up into the air her arm swinging backward and then suddenly down, the ruler hitting me across the knuckles of my hand, it bloody hurt. "Now leave the room and stand outside till I call you." I went outside and cried. Not just with the incredible stinging pain that my knuckles were in but in the total frustration of knowing I couldn't wander the school library anymore.
My mother told me I shouldn't be reading in class during a maths lesson. But she took it upon herself to take me and my two sisters regularly to the public library, allowing to choose books from the children's library and by using her ticket, books from the adult library too. Ten years old and I was reading the works of Isaac Asimov, excellent stories like The Bicentennial Man.."A Robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
So I suppose I owe something to todays generation of children so that they too get to enjoy reading books as much as I did when I was a child.
Day 30 and this morning we are cleaning the pool with the manual pool vacuum. A beastie of a thing, that has a heavy square metal suction attachment and a long blue plastic tube that twists itself around everyone and everything. The pool water is sucked up from the end and then recirculated through the filter, which catches any dirt from the bottom of the pool. Three good legs cat watched on from the pool side with great interest, occasionally threatening to jump in and catch the blue snake that was moving up and down as Chris manipulated the steel pole the vacuum was attached to.
The Mayor of Lanjaron .. the place where the mineral water comes from. Has dipped into the Town Hall coffers and ruled that every citizen in the town will have a face mask and gloves, given to them every week. A few days ago the conservative Mayor of Motril complained bitterly that the Province, also conservative run, were going to stop the displays of appreciation toward the local Police. The Secretary of State for Security Sandra Garcia had put out the instruction.
The first people to say they were going to ignore our Sandra were actually members of the Police! The whole thing snowballed and came to bite Ms Sandra Garcia on the bum. The prohibition has been dropped and the citizens of this area can wave flags, sing songs from their balconies and the Police can also wish children happy birthday whilst they are confined to their houses, the police can continue also to wave at the crowds and sound their sirens. A wonderful people powered, democratic U-turn.
The Mayors of all the villages and towns here have a great deal of autonomy. Their rule is God. Sometimes it is misused, like naming a local street after a family member or indulging themselves in pet schemes. One local Mayor has been very keen to see the municipal market disappear. There is a theory that she has been approached by a supermarket chain that fancies the plot the market is on for their next superstore. Although the market hasn't been built for long, it was poorly constructed and in danger of falling down. But there has been a lot of local opposition to the whole scheme, with people demonstrating in the street, social media videos made etc.
So the Mayor waited to Lockdown and brought in the bulldozers, and has raised the whole market to the ground. Mayors have a great deal of autonomy. And of course nobody could take to the streets to demonstrate, the deed had been done and the market traders have been put out of work.
Day 30 is ending and I not convinced we are even half way through this, I am equally convinced that the whole world will have to keep the rules of distance until a vaccine is found, these are the new rules, .. and we are getting used to it.