A Foot in Two Campos

LOCKDOWN DAY TWO:

Monday is the first “normal” day of the lockdown.  I go to the surgery for routine blood tests.  Everyone is maintaining social distance.  Doctors and nurses are wearing masks and gloves.  The village is VERY quiet.  I use the opportunity to go to a couple of food shops.  In the first, they have put tape on the floor to keep people queuing at a good metre’s distance from each other, and that works well.  It feels a bit like a board game, when the person at the till leaves the shop we can all move one square forward.  In the bakery, a sign prohibits more than one customer at a time, and there is a tray to put the money on.
 

We learn to ration our “treats” – in the morning the socially-distant doorstep chat (shout) with the neighbours.  In the afternoon a walk to the shop.  A chance to talk to humans, whether the can of tuna you buy is absolutely essential or not.
 

A purple button has appeared on our health app.  This app, Salud Responde, allows us to book GP or nurse appointments (usually the same day or the next).  The purple button, marked “Coronavirus” is slightly too vibrant, and throbs ominously.  I haven’t dared press it as it has the air of being poised to squirt disinfectant in my face.
 

 

In the squares all the benches are empty. 

It looks and feels very strange.

LOCKDOWN DAY FOUR:

Every night at 8pm, across Spain people take to their balconies and join together to applaud the health workers and the emergency services.  It is incredibly moving.  Videos from the big cities show neighbours leaning over, waving at each other, and clapping.  It is sparser in my village, but as I clap on my top terrace our thin and scattered applause merges above us and floats off to join in the nation’s gratitude.

The Spanish king addresses the nation, as does the Prime Minister.  The general view is that this will go on for a couple of months beyond the initial fortnight.
 

LOCKDOWN DAY SIX:

The shop at the top of my road) has upped its game.  We queue outside until someone leaves.  A squirt of disinfectant on the hands as you enter.  It is no surprise that here nobody is taking advantage of the situation – I bought a 12-pack of loo rolls for 1,40€.
 

There’s bad news from a dear friend whose brother has the virus.  He’s in hospital in Madrid so she can’t go to see him, and he’s in his 80s.  It brings it home.  It’s not just about funny memes and clapping on balconies.
 

On the patio it is very quiet.  There is almost no traffic, and the road improvements in the village have had to stop.   The sound of birdsong is everywhere.  It was there before, but we had forgotten to hear it.
 

LOCKDOWN DAY EIGHT:

Life inside the prison cell has just got a whole lot better.  A bunch of women friends have done battle with technology and we manage a group video call between five of us.  I have an extra-long shouty-chat with Ana-Mari opposite, she on her balcony, me inside my front door but with the glass section open, shouting through the bars.

From next door Isabel waves, but today she doesn’t come out.  She’s at the kitchen table with her sewing machine, making face-masks for the healthcare staff and for local people, she is one of a team of volunteers across the village doing this, and a bigger team across Andalucía.  Not all heroes wear capes.

We discover that the Spanish Prime Minister is going to ask parliament for an extension to the lockdown, to April 12th.  We knew it was coming, but there is still a sinking feeling.
 

It’s drizzling, which cuts down slightly on terrace-exercise.  On LBC radio this morning they interviewed a Frenchman who has just completed an actual Lockdown Marathon since their confinement began in France.  His terrace is 7-metres long, and he has counted up all those 7-metre chunks and has done 6,028 lengths of his terrace.  In many ways it’s a metaphor for seeing the bigger picture, seeing how small contributions, small steps, add up and contribute to something big and valuable.

Like staying indoors, for the greater good.  #MeQuedoEnCasa

©  Tamara  Essex  2020                                 http://www.twocampos.com

It’s just as well that the Spanish prime minister is easy on the eye.  Guapo, we say in Spanish.  Just as well, as we sit glued to the television watching his almost daily pronouncements.  It’s just like those days last year when we couldn’t tear ourselves away from BBC Parliament.


And he is very definitely on a Spanish timetable.  The Friday afternoon governmental declaration was due at 2.30.  President Sánchez finally emerged at 3.15.  The more significant Saturday evening official announcement of the state of emergency was due at 8pm.  The Twitter feed of La Moncloa (the equivalent of No 10 Downing Street) was full of sarcastic comments, and questions as to whether the president was on Canary Isles time (an hour later than mainland Spain).  In the end, he was an hour and a half late, as the cabinet meeting had gone on for over seven hours.
 

He spoke clearly, with both compassion and authority.  He emphasised that we are all in this together – but here it actually rang true, unlike when that phrase was used by the UK Tory government about austerity.  Later on Saturday night it rang even truer, as it emerged on social media that Sánchez’ wife has tested positive for Covid-19.  So we really ARE in it together right up to the president’s family, and he emphasised the need to act together and sensibly in order to protect the entire nation.
 

And he raised his papers, shook them in the air, and told us that the lockdown would start with immediate effect, 10pm on Saturday night.  By chance, just as he finished, right across Spain people broke out into applause on their balconies.  It wasn’t for him, it was a social-media spread idea to show thanks to all our health and emergency workers.  It was a huge success, and the videos were incredibly moving – a visible and audible show of gratitude, and I sincerely hope that it was heard by those to whom it was aimed.
 

Today, Day One of the Lockdown, it is Sunday so it would be a quiet day anyway.  We are allowed out to buy food and go to the bank.  These little pleasures, along with taking out the rubbish and the recycling, will no doubt become the highlights of our day.  “Social distancing” is the new buzz-phrase.   Here in the village the shops (yesterday, before the lockdown) were well-stocked and nobody was panic-buying.  This morning I shall go for a VERY short walk to see if one of the mini-supermarkets is open.  As much to get some fresh air and stretch my legs as anything else.  Sunday is usually a sofa-day.  I’m beginning to wonder what a sofa-fortnight will be like.
 

This morning we had a “socially-distant” gathering of the women in my little callejón (cul-de-sac).  One in pyjamas, one in a bathrobe, the rest in trackies or floppies.  One up on her balcony, the rest of us on our doorsteps.  Five of us, 45 minutes together but apart, though Antonia beckoned me closer while she disappeared indoors to gather up 14 beautiful freshly-laid eggs for me.  “They just keep on laying!” she said exasperatedly, carefully passing me the bag of treasure.  We finished our gathering with an agreement to do it every morning.  Not breaking the lockdown, not really bending the rules, but managing to be a little bit social while maintaining social distance.  All in all, it’s not the worst place to be trapped.
 

Social media is both a blessing and a curse.  An absolute pandemic of mis-information!  Yet a few gems, small groups springing up offering local help, ensuring that neighbours have all they need.  And jokes.  Of course there are jokes.  A debate is raging on social media about why hairdressers are allowed to remain open, while other retail and service shops are not.  The reason is for older and disabled customers who can’t wash their hair, but it has become a major talking-point (internet displacement activity, maybe?).  So of course, the idea emerged that bars could rebrand as hairdressers! (la peluquería)!
 

I have no idea whether the approach adopted in Spain is the right one, or the one in the UK.  None of us do.  I don’t doubt the medical experts on whom the UK is relying, but nor do I doubt the Spanish ones.  All of them are aiming to keep us all healthy, and they have come to different conclusions as to how to do that.  We won’t know which is right.  Not until it is way too late.

©  Tamara  Essex  2020                                    http://www.twocampos.com

I get to the bar first, bang on time.  You can take the woman out of England but you can’t take English punctuality out of the woman.  Miguel makes my coffee and disappears into the miniscule kitchen to tip some brown sugar into a tiny espresso cup for me.  I roll my eyes at him and he says he’s decided to order some sachets of brown at last.  ¡Por fin!  I’ve teased him often enough about it.
 

His bar is above a swimming pool accessories shop, it’s near the crossroads up towards Periana, and it’s easy to park.  Adriana has collected Lola and Charo in Málaga and they are on their way to pick me up.  They park, Spanish-timetable, late, as expected, but I just can’t assume that will happen so I’m always first to arrive.  The noise levels increase as my three friends clatter up the wooden stairs and order their coffees, very specific, very demanding, very un-English.  We’re not kissing or hugging, unusually, and the first of a hundred conversation topics is THAT virus. 
 

After coffee the Spaniards want to visit the nearby English supermarket, and for the umpteenth time I explain that the name “Arkwright’s” comes from a TV comedy series, and the origin of ‘wright” as a maker, an artisan, such as a wheelwright.  Lola loves studying English and has a thousand questions.   Adriana has not a word of English but makes a beeline for Gale’s lemon curd, ignoring my plaintive reminder that it is nothing like as nice as the farmshop lemon curd they bought last year on a visit to my Dorset pueblo, Shaftesbury.  Then the biscuit aisle for Scottish shortbread, then the array of Twinings teas.  Finally we grab bread for our picnic, and carry our goodies out to the car.
 

Up the hill and then off onto the track up to Adriana’s campo house.  First along the parallel track to open the stopcock so we will have water.  Not only for our next coffees, but more importantly so we can water some of her trees.  It’s why we go up there, officially.  That’s the pretext, but it’s mostly just for the companionable picnic and conversation.  Stopcock opened, she padlocks the box and jumps back in the car.  We turn and the track snakes higher up to the junction where her chain blocks the access.
 

The pretty drawstring bag is removed from the glove compartment and the bunch of tagged keys is produced.  Lola, Charo and I carry on chatting while Adriana fiddles with the padlock.  One topic is put to bed and another starts up, until suddenly we realise that she is still fighting the lock and the chain remains firmly in place.  Lola leaps out to help, to equally pointlessly try every key in the obdurate padlock.  Puzzled, Adriana peers into the drawstring pouch, and we tip out all the odd keys that can accumulate as if drawn to each other and reproducing in the bag.  There is nothing the right size.  Never mind, it’s only a short walk up the remainder of the track, and we sort out our bags containing our contributions to the shared lunch before stepping over the chain and climbing the slope.
 

Arriving on the terrace with its spectacular view of the lake and the mountains, we fall to our usual tasks, bringing chairs and the table round to the side with the view, while Adriana went to open up the house.  Lola regales us with a story and we are laughing as we unstack plastic chairs.  Suddenly we see Adriana’s face as she frantically works through the bunch of keys.  None of them works in the front door.  The lock remains as uncompliant as the padlock had.  You can almost hear our brains working it out … we have mountains of food and drink but no knives, bottle-openers or plates.  We have plenty to eat but no access to the bathroom or the kitchen.  We settle around the table to think, spreading out bread, cheese and olives on the paper they were wrapped in.  Adriana phones her son;  he was up here last weekend, but he says there was no problem with the keys then.
 

It’s early March and the sun beats down.  The cold meat I’ve brought, a speciality of my pueblo, needs a knife.  Charo’s stuffed peppers are not finger-food.  We can’t make the planned salad.  But we fail to make an alternative plan, as the conversation meanders over new ground, and the last bit of cheese gets finished off.   Finally one of us, I don’t remember who, suggests that we take ourselves off to a venta, a rural bar-restaurante.  The food gets bundled back into the bags, the chairs and the table are returned to their places, and we make our way back down to the car, stepping over the unyielding chain.


 

We contour round the mountain track and head off in a different direction.  Adriana takes us through Periana and along to los Baños de Vilo.  This is the Axarquía, the inland area east of Málaga.  Not as well-known as the hotspots west of the city, not so popular with incomers.  Our secret.  These are the mountains I see from Colmenar.  These are the hills, draped with fruit trees and wandered over by goats, that are my stamping-ground.  As always, the Spanish women are puzzled as to how their guiri-friend, the foreigner in their group, has explored these out-of-the-way tracks, when they haven’t.
 

We cut through to los Baños de Vilo, a Moorish tower and pool with natural sulphurous water.  In the hot sun the smell of the sulphur was rank and we were not tempted in to bathe.  Back in the car, the cheese and olives now a distant memory, our driver and guide took us on to the hamlet of Guaro.  I’ve often parked there for the varied hiking trails, the route up to the dramatic Zafarraya Pass, and the renowned restaurant which is where we now head.  A shared banquet of scrambled eggs with young garlic shoots, soup made of local freshly-picked asparagus, and a salad the size of the mountain across the valley.
 

Then a hike, a stop to eat the tasty strawberries Charo had brought, and back to the car (there may also have been the theft of a fat lemon, warm to the touch, for each of us).  Down towards civilisation just as it gets dark.  The whole day has gone, and the full moon rises behind the palm fronds.  Miguel’s bar is closed now but we cross to the other one for a final coffee before jokingly bumping elbows instead of a goodbye kiss.
 

It wasn’t the day we’d planned, it wasn’t the long afternoon relaxing in the kitchen and on the terrace of the campo house.  “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” as Robert Burns wrote.  It couldn’t have mattered less.

©  Tamara  Essex  2020                                        http://www.twocampos.com