Sunday 13th December, 2020
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| Coffee time during my Christmas shopping expedition with Olivia on Wednesday. |
Dear all,
I trust I find you all well. It is now the middle of December, Christmas is coming and so is the vaccine. Also looming is a no deal for Brexit and the chaos it will cause all around.
This week saw the first people being inoculated in the UK. We shall have to wait a bit more in Spain and the rest of the EU. Meanwhile, the virus continues to disrupt our lives. This week has seen the number of those infected jump from 66.8 million to 72.1 million and the number of fatalities go from 1.534.806 to 1.611.948. I really can't wait to see the end of 2020. 2021 just has to be better. Well, it couldn't be worse could it?
Yes Christmas is looming but I'm not really into the spirit of it yet although I am trying my best. Last Sunday would have been the perfect day to put up the tree but I was just not inspired. We have decided we shall do so this afternoon although I really don't feel like it. Ever since I was a child I looked forward to the moment, but, sadly, not this year. It's not just a tree we put up but almost our own personal winter wonderland which takes hours. If it were just the tree then maybe it would already be up. Last Sunday was like most Sundays this year, quiet and uneventful. I think we are all getting tired of seeing the same faces and being in the same place. We were alone again and apart from our walk, never left the house. I remember last Sunday mostly because of my 2 hour long Facetime session with our friends Kathy and Phil who live in good old Keighley in West Yorkshire. This year will have been the first year we haven't seen them in probably a decade. We are all dying to be able to travel again. They want to come to Spain and I am dying to go to Yorkshire, which holds a very special place in my heart as I grew up there.
These video calls keep me going. On Monday I would have my weekly skype call with Amanda who lives in Devon and next weekend I have a scheduled call with my dear friends Sandra and Adele who live in Brussels and Orleans respectively. I haven't seen them either this year. As Kathy said, when things get back to normal we will all be crazy to travel again. I will be first on the list no doubt, yet not first on the list for a vaccine. However, after the vaccine I hope life will resume to some kind of normality. I am hoping my Airbnb business will pick up again. I sincerely hope it does. Airbnb went public this week and prices for shares soared. I wish I had been able to buy some. I do hope this translates into higher guest intake in 2021.
The week has been very quiet. Monday was especially so. I woke up feeling like a zombie. I had had a bad night of coughing from my lingering cold which has now lasted nearly a month. I sometimes wonder if it is Covid but it isn't. The cough was especially bad that night and I stuffed myself with pills and then during the middle of the night went down to the kitchen to make a drink; a concoction of honey, lemon juice and rum to which I added boiling water. It helped but what really rid me of the cough was a strong codeine tablet of which I only had one left. I didn't know how to get anymore as doctors are reluctant to prescribe it. It's the only remedy to stop coughing. The side effect is that it leaves you constipated for 2 or 3 days. But anything is better than non stop coughing.
Monday was the midway point of the Spanish long bank holiday. Sunday 6th was Constitution Day and Tuesday 8th would be the day of the Immaculate Conception. Normally people would have gone away for the duration but because of Covid none of us could. The only option was to stay at home. Don't get me wrong, I love my home. It's just that when something is not allowed that you crave for it most. Don't you think?
Well, I wasn't going away anywhere on Monday either or for most of the week. On Monday as usual I watched Oli at 8 am in the morning doing her usual reporting on the latest Covid statistics in Spain. A bit later she did a report on the new vaccine to be rolled out in the UK. She did that using AR (augmented reality) which I thought was really special.
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| Oli using AR to present the vaccine roll out strategy in the UK |
Watching her too was her son, little Elliot, who was off school (nursery really) that day, owing to the bank holiday. Miguel capture him on camera. He looks a little confused but I think he recognises her towards the end of the video which you can see below.
He certainly knows the woman on the screen is his mother and he reaches out for her. I think it's a lovely video, one I shall keep.
We got a photo of him too that morning, playing and enjoying one of his classical music books. He does so love them. I think they are great. There was nothing like them when our children were small.
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| Elliot enjoying one of his music books |
We didn't go out for our walk that day as it was freezing and raining on and off. That morning I did a long overdue task; sorting out all the DVDs in our library lounge. I know DVDs are a thing of the past and we all use streaming, but not all content is available on streaming so I decided to keep the DVDs of the films we like or want to watch again. The rest, at least half of them, I threw away. That took me two hours believe it or not. I classified them into classics, the box collections, WW2 (lots of those) and then my overall favourites.
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| DVDs all sorted |
Some of my favourites are the following: To kill a mocking bird, Schindler's List, Gandhi, The King and I, Dr. Zhivago, Gone with the Wind, The Nun's Story, Spring and Port Wine, Churchill, Victoria, The Windsors, Anne Sullivan/Helen Keller and of course The Sound of Music. Another all time favourite is Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman. I didn't have it so I ordered it online. I couldn't wait to watch it again. Funny choice I bet you think. I had to buy it on Amazon UK and later got a grim message about future taxes on products owing to Brexit (sniff).
I then turned my hand to making lunch - soup followed by home made meat balls. I actually slept for 1.5h hours afterwards missing the news as I was so tired after a more or less sleepless night the night before owing to my damned cough. I didn't miss anything new though as I'm always up to date thanks to my phone. Thus I knew the state of the deal or no deal for Brexit. I wondered if there will be one in the end. I knew too of course about the vaccine roll out in the UK and in Russia with their own Sputnik version.
In the afternoon Amanda and I had our weekly Skype call but didn't talk too much about the news. My friend is so fed up with it as it's all depressing, that she has decided to take a break from keeping up with the news. That is something I cannot do. I'm not even sure I wish I could as I am such a news junkie. We talked about all sorts of things, our own lives and our children's lives and also went back into our past as girls when we went to school together in Bradford. I always love those parts of our conversation. Our memories are sketchy but if we combine them both we add to the richness of them.
When we had finished I only had a bit of time left to watch a bit of Season 9 of Call the Midwife before it was time for dinner. Before going to bed I rang both my girls. It was lovely to see Elliot although he cut us off two or three times as he is fascinated with the red button hahahahaha. It was lovely too to see Suzy although she was a bit down that day. We are going to miss her at Christmas but will ring her on Christmas Eve. That day I got round to doing our annual family Christmas photo which I sent to the family. This is it by the way. Like it? I do.
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| Our annual Christmas photo, or one of them as no doubt I shall be doing more. |
We later watched an interesting film set in Jersey during WW2 called Another Mother's Son, where a local woman takes in a Russian escaped prisoner of war and hides him. It was a film just up our street of course. Eladio was amazed to know that the Channel Islands, which he had never heard of, were occupied by the Nazis in the war.
I was most relieved that night when my cough was not so bad and I got more or less a decent night's sleep.
Tuesday came and it was a holiday here to celebrate the Immaculate Conception. Being a national holiday both Oli and Miguel were off work which was great for them. In fact Oli took off the rest of the week. She is owed quite a few days holiday which she must take before the end of February otherwise they will expire. It's a bit frustrating she can't go anywhere. But it would give us a chance to do some mother and daughter Christmas shopping at least.
It was dubbed "V Day" in the UK as the first batches of the Pfizer vaccine were administered making my birth country the first country in the Western World to start its vaccine programme against Covid. 90 year old Margaret (Maggie) Keenan, aged 90, became the first person to receive the jab and was quite astonished at the interest from the media.
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| Margaret Keenan, the first person to receive the jab in the UK |
Also hitting the news was May Parsons, the Matron of Coventry Hospital who administered the very first injection. Maggie Keenan who is originally from County Fernamagh was extremely lucid when she said that she felt privileged to the be first person to be vaccinated adding "it's the best early birthday present I could wish for because it means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the new year after being on my own for most of the year". She said too: "My advice to anyone offered the vaccine is to take it. If I can have it at 90, then you can have it too".I was intrigued to hear that the second person to be vaccinated was called William Shakespeare. The 81 year old with the same name as "the Bard" received his jab at the same hospital as Keenan very near the latter's birthplace in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The media had a field day with his name and the vaccine. Well it was offered up to them on a plate I suppose. The BBC wrote "Shakespeare gets Covid vaccine". Other media said the The Taming of the Shrew had become the Taming of the Flu. Twitter too enjoyed the moment with one user asking "Would William Shakespeare be 2B or not 2B". I would love to know what his life has been like with a name so famous as that.
For the UK it was indeed an historic day and even the health secretary, Matt Hancock, overcome with emotion while speaking on the news, shed a tear a two and said that it made him "proud to be British". More than that, his tears of relief probably came after a very tough 9 months of being in the front line in combating the virus. There was good news too when the British public heard that day that next week and the following there will be larger shipments of the virus so more people like Keenan and William Shakespeare will get their dose. I'm not sure I am proud to be British right now what with the Brexit deal or no deal looming and time running out. I am feeling a bit pessimistic. Hopes were raised as Boris Johnson was due to meet EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels. Would they be able to save the day? We all waited with bated breath. They had dinner - of fish- but nothing came of it.
V Day in Spain was a holiday in honour of the Immaculate Conception. For my daughter Olivia and her partner Miguel, that meant a day off. Their programme is never broadcast on national holidays. So they dressed up warmly and went to visit the lovely Retiro Park in the centre of Madrid. Miguel sent me photos. I love this one of mother and son don't you?
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| Mother and son - Oli and Elliot in the Retiro on Tuesday |
Later when we spoke on the phone and she told me about their day I said it reminded me of when we used to take her and Suzy to the Retiro every Sunday when they were small. We did so nearly every Sunday when we lived in the centre of the city. I remember dressing them beautifully in matching clothes and driving to the park. We always bought them sweets ("chuches") and they would feed the ducks with bread. We would then walk along the main thoroughfare watching street performers. They especially loved the puppet shows. We would also stop for a coffee and later take them to the swings and slides. So when I got photos of Oli and Elliot at the Retiro on Tuesday I was transported back to their childhood. Lovely bygone days when I was even younger than Oli and had two small children. Where has time gone?
Time went slowly at home that day. We went for our walk too, this time wearing gloves as the temperatures had plummeted. For the rest of the day we were snugly at home. The day ended with us watching a beautiful film, The Painted Veil (2006) based on the British author, Somerset Maugham's book of the same name.
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| Our choice of film on Tuesday night |
It is a beautiful romantic tale set in China in the 1920s. I loved it.
Wednesday was to be a very different and special day. That was the day Oli and I chose to go and do our Christmas shopping. It was Oli's first day of her short holiday this week and for her it was probably a relief not to have to go to work or look after Elliot who was at the nursery from 09.30 to 3 pm. Later we saw photos of him enjoying painting with his little companions, all in their yellow overalls.
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| Elliot at the nursery enjoying painting with his little companions on Wednesday while we were out Christmas shopping. |
We had the morning to ourselves and it felt so good. It would have been even better with Suzy but that was not to be. We chose a quiet day to go to Gran Plaza 2 shopping centre, not wanting to meet crowds and we didn't. Oli had to have a selfie for the occasion. It was an occasion too as it must have been the first time we were out enjoying retail therapy since before lockdown in March.
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| Oli and I - a selfie of us out shopping on Wednesday |
We went into Fnac, Zara (oh wow!), Zara Home (love that shop), various opticians for Oli to buy sun glasses - she has a huge collection - to Oysho which also belongs to Zara and specialises in night and underwear. We also went to Natura and Primark but we didn't find anything at the latter. We bought presents for each other and Oli also bought stuff for herself. I was amused to see her put everything on as soon as she had bought it: the sunglasses, a cardigan from Zara (see photo below) and a new ring. She reminded me of myself as a child. Whenever my mother bought me new shoes for example, I would immediately ask to put them on and leave my old shoes in the box. I loved the feeling of wearing something new. I still do. Obviously Oli does too.
In between our very successful purchases we stopped to have a cup of coffee with a little something. Oli chose Rodilla, popular in Spain for its sandwiches. I don't actually like them and was more tempted by a croissant. This was our tray.
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| Our coffee, sandwiches and croissant at Rodilla on Wednesday |
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| Oli at Rodilla during our shopping expedition on Wednesday |
Back to what we ate (hahahaha). I have loved croissants ever since I tried one at Gare du Nord in Paris when I traveled as a young teenager. I remember watching how the French dunked theirs into their café au lait and I followed suit and have done ever since. That is by far the best way to eat them. Croissants in Spain are popular too but not usually as good as in France. I have to say though that the one I had at Rodilla was delicious. Oli took a photo of me with the tray too which I have chosen for this week's feature photo as it was such a happy moment. Shopping and enjoying our coffee was such a simple and lovely pleasure and it made us forget Covid at times. If it hadn't been for our masks it could easily have felt normal. When will our lives be normal again I wonder?
I have now bought nearly everything I need except for some purchases which I will have to buy online. We were home on time for lunch and Olivia joined us until she had to go home to her "men". I spent the afternoon watching TV in the lounge. I finally finished Call the Midwife which I am missing now. I'm wondering when Season 10 will be available. When I had finished the final DVD, I turned to The Nun's Story starring Audrey Hepburn. It is in my top 10 and I would enjoy watching it that day and the next.
We were in bed early again, watched something rubbishy on Amazon Prime and soon fell asleep. I did have another big coughing fit during the night and had to go down to make that horrible hot beverage of rum, lemon and honey to calm it. It did the trick. That night Boris Johnson and Ursula Von der Leyen had their now famous dinner where they had hoped to smooth some of the last obstacles to the Brexit deal. As I said at the beginning, it is now looking like the UK will exit the EU without a deal and all that that means. Terrible!
Thursday came and would be another pleasant day, especially as Oli and Elliot would be joining us in the afternoon. The morning wasn't pleasant though. When I came down for breakfast I found Elsa our lab hadn't eaten her breakfast, a sure sign she is not well as she usually gobbles her food. She was due for an operation on her leg (sorry, paw) on Monday and was in obvious pain. But it wasn't the leg that bothered me. It was when I saw her spitting blood as I tried to feed her that I became alarmed. Eladio had to take her to the vet inside her bed as she couldn't get out. He stayed there from about 10 am to 1 pm until she was admitted to hospital. She has an abscess in her mouth which smelled foul by the way. They had to sedate her to take a proper look and see what had to be done. The poor dog stayed in hospital overnight. Thus we missed our walk and the weekly shop for food provisions. Our day improved when Oli and Elliot arrived in the middle of our siesta. It improved in that we got to see him but we could have done with a nap. I am still suffering from a cough and need as much sleep as I can get. We had to leave them to go and do the shopping. Once home it was all hands on deck to put everything away and to make our dinner. Elliot was in his element playing with the magnets on our fridge and with my china ducks in the lounge, many of which are now broken. What can I do? Not much as I can hardly try to baby proof this large sprawling house.
Miguel joined us for dinner and it was a good one as I had just done the shopping. I served grilled hake (merluza) with garlic and coriander and fresh asparagus and runner beans. I made a rather runny mayonnaise to go with the fish as my blender has broken. We had a lovely bottle of chilled "Albariño" white wine to go with our meal. Elliot entertained us as usual. I caught him and his "grandpa" Eladio on camera both smiling at something on my husband's phone that could have been Peppa Pig which he adores. I must say I rather like it too.
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| Elliot and Eladio smiling together |
Franco was much in the news in Spain that day when a palace known as Pazo de Meiras, in Galicia, was handed over to the Spanish government. The Pazo was given to the Spanish state 82 years ago but Franco's family insist it is theirs. Payment for the Pazo was made possible by semi forced taxing of people in the area. It turned out too that many of the contents were spoils of the Franco family, some including artwork of incalculable value from the Cathedral of Santiago. The palace is valued at approximately 8 million euros but the contents are probably worth as much or more. Franco's memory lingers on in Spain and although a ghost of the past, he will always remain.
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| Pazo de Meiras |
Friday came, an important day for me, the day of my appointment with the Ministry of Justice. That sounds ominous but it was not. I had to go to request my Criminal Records (or lack of them) from the UK. As I told you a while back, this is possible until 31st of this month when Brexit goes live. Until then Spain and other countries have access to the UK's data base. The certificate I need is the last paper to collect to present my case for Spanish nationality. It was a cold and wet day and neither Eladio nor I fancied going to the centre of Madrid for fear of Covid. We frankly couldn't recollect when we had last been. Was it really in January when Sandra came? The Ministry is on a street just behind the main square, Puerta del Sol, where Spaniards usually see in the New Year. That won't be happening of course now because of Covid. I wasn't sure what to expect at the Ministry and was worried this wouldn't be an easy document to obtain. However the clerk there seemed to take my request as pretty routine and assured me I would receive the coveted document in 2 weeks time. I wonder though whether the Christmas post will make that possible. If the document never arrives and that could happen, I shall have to resort to asking the CRB in the UK for the document which takes a month to arrive and then is only valid for 2 months, not to mention the cost.
I was quite happy as I came out and we decided to have a coffee outside and take a stroll in the heart of the city centre. It was a bit wet but no longer raining. Once in the main square, I got Eladio to take a photo of me with my documents to record the moment. Here I am. I never realised what skinny legs I have. That day I was wearing a dress - unusual for me - instead of my normal jeans or leggings.
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| In Madrid - Puerta del Sol - on Friday morning |
Coffee in the street in December is not very heart warming but it was nice to be out. The sounds coming from local workers digging up a pavement were not conducive to making it a pleasant occasion so we sipped our coffee quickly and walked away. In the Puerta del Sol especially there are lots of lottery establishments selling Spain's famous Christmas lottery, "El Gordo" which has one of the highest jack pots in the world. Buying tickets (décimos at 20 euros each) is a tradition at Christmas which took me some time to understand when I first came to live here. I remember that one of our first rows was when Eladio had spent precious money on the lottery when we were about to travel to the UK in his old car, money I thought was recklessly spent. Today, though I equate to this most Spanish of traditions. He had instructions to get just one "décimo" as I was poised with my camera to capture the moment. He then shocked me by asking for 6! To explain himself, he said , "oh well, it's Christmas" and I agreed with him.
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| Eladio with his lottery tickets on Friday in town |
Another Spanish tradition at Christmas is eating "turrón". Similar to nougat there are two main versions, the hard and the soft. These are made with honey, sugar, egg white and most importantly, almonds. I am not that keen on the traditional turrón, far preferring other types made of coconut or chocolate. I actually prefer French nougat which is softer on the teeth and less sickly sweet. It's difficult to find in Spain but there is an establishment, Torrons Vicens, very near the Puerta del Sol where I buy nougat every year. We went in as we do every year and I got my bar of fruity nougat as well as an enticing bar of white chocolate with pistachios, only to be consumed on Christmas Eve. Eladio caught me on camera with this delicious confectionery.
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| Me in the turrón shop on Friday in Madrid. |
We were home by 1.30. Oli was there and had enjoyed a morning on her own, perhaps the first since Elliot was born. His father had taken him to the nursery when he went to work that morning. We had lentils for lunch, courtesy of Lucy, then I had a much needed siesta. I coughed through most of it but must have slept a bit as I didn't wake up when Eladio got up to go to the vet to pick up Elsa. Oli went with him and they weren't back till 18.30.
Poor Elsa. She has a nasty mouth infection and is being treated with antibiotics, cortisone and pain killers. She hardly moved that evening and wouldn't touch a morsel of food. We were told to feed her chicken and rice, a delicacy but she wasn't interested.
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| Elsa came home on Friday. Eladio administering her medicines. |
I had to go out to get her food as I didn't have any chicken at home. Oli and Elliot came with me and we got her lots of thinly cut cooked chicken and microwave rice. For ourselves we went to El Tuareg, the Moroccan restaurant, where we had ordered a take away. We love the food there but are wary of eating at restaurants unless it is outside and of course in December it is far too cold to do that.
The dinner was delicious: humus with pitta bread, falafel, sabila, pastela and baklava all washed down by good Rioja wine. It was nearly as good as going out but not quite.
Saturday came and Elsa must have been better as she ate her chicken and rice that morning. We were so happy to see that. She was booked to have an operation on her paw tomorrow but that will have to wait until she is infection free. Poor sweet Elsa. How sorry we feel for her. This morning, she was definitely better as she got out of her bed as soon as I entered the kitchen, her tail wagging and eager for her food. Thankfully she is now on the mend.
Saturday was a day alone after Oli and her family left. Oh how they brighten up our weekends. We went on our walk and in the afternoon I started watching The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.
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| Classic film with Ingrid Bergman and one of my favourites |
I remember watching it with my mother - it was one of her favourite films too - It is the story of an English missionary who goes to China just before the war with Japan. It stars my father's favourite actress, Ingrid Bergman. I think part of her attraction for him is that she was Swedish. I love her too. The 1958 film is actually based on the true story of the life of Gladys Aylward, a "tenacious British woman, who became a missionary in China during the tumultuous years leading up to the Second World War." Some years ago, I read her biography, "The little woman" which was nowhere near as romantic as the film. I later read that the real Gladys Aylward was not pleased with film as the romance in it according to her did not happen and that she was small and dark and not beautiful so Bergman was the wrong actress for her role. Even though Aylward didn't like it, it still remains one of my overall favourite films.
We had dinner watching the news on my iPad in the kitchen as we always do. I was happy to hear that the US regulator had approved the Pfizer vaccine and that inoculations will probably begin next Monday. I was not happy to learn that the rich countries have already bought up nearly all the vaccines to be found, meaning there will only be enough for about 14% of the world's population. We need vaccines for all the worlds' population if we are to eradicate the virus. I was not happy either to see the beginning of the consequences of a no deal Brexit - stockpiling of goods for Christmas and beyond before tariffs are imposed and huge queues of lorries in Kent.
Homeland Season 6 which I think we are re watching, was our entertainment last night. Last night was the second nearly cough free night in more than a month so I must be on the mend. Elsa is on the mend too which made me happy this morning.
The idea today is to put up our Christmas decorations. In my next blog post you will see the results. Those of you who follow me on social media will see them before of course.
I shall love you and leave you now to get on with my day, another very quiet Sunday during the pandemic.
Cheers to you all till next Sunday,
Masha.
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