There are worse things than not having a haircut for four months. The Wild Man of Borneo Not in Álora is staying alert.
When a dramatic disaster happens to you, for example having all your documents and money stolen in North Korea or falling overboard from a cross-channel ferry or being captured by terrorists and held to ransom (it could happen), you can always take some comfort by imagining what a good story it will make to tell to your mates at work , your family and friends when, and if, you survive.
That's the trouble with this Coronavirus / Covid 19 pandemic - all the people you could tell about your experiences at the moment are having the same or similar ones; some more dramatic and disasterous than yours. Even if you have friends on the other side of the world or in Cornwall or even in the Turks and Caicos Islands (Hello loyal readers), you can bet your boots that they've got their own Corona story to tell.
You can't even say to yourself, 'Just wait till I tell my grandchildren about this.', because they're in it too, and you may never see them again anyway.
That's why so many people have started to write a diary - not just to try and get it published and make some money (you have to be a celebrity to try that one) but to be able, if you get through it all alive, to look back on these traumatic times and have a good old laugh. I know I'm looking forward to that.
Having said all that, Mrs. Sánchez and I have had a pretty easy time of it so far. As long as you don't want to go out and can limit your Coronavirus news consumption to only once a day, the minutes, hours, days and weeks just slide by.
We're on Day 59 of lockdown today in the UK, or at least in Scotland and Northern Ireland and possibly Wales, we are. Nobody's really sure what's allowed at the moment in England and by the look of things round here, they never did.
Birmingham, and the Midlands in general are getting a serious biffing from the virus, but sitting here in the expansive luxuriant garden of our winter (and summer) residence on a sunny day with a glass of wine or a cup of tea, it´s easy to forget that we are in the middle of the worst worldwide catastrophe since World War One - you just ask Sir Colonel Tom.
Mind you, some places haven't even got the virus - such as Turkmenistan, Tonga, the Isles of Scilly (in Cornwall) and Ambridge. Bully for them. We booked a holiday in the Isles of Scilly for July but the word is that most Scillonians don't want any visitors from mainland Britain, and who can blame them? not I! - as long as I get my deposit back.
Back in Álora, which we are not, things are starting to get back to ´normal'. Pedro Sánchez (no relation), the Prime Minister of Spain has extended the State of Emergency again but he's introduced 'un horario por etapas' (phased timetable), nothing to do with tapas, which are banned). Movement up through the phases may vary across the regions and within the regions depending on the number of new cases and deaths.
Fase 0, (Phase 1), which began for the whole of Spain on May 4th. was to last a week, during which some businesses could reopen, such as restaurants , but only for food deliveries to the home. You could go out for walks with people from the same household and play 'individual' sports.
After being banged up for months on end you can imagine how keen everybody is to get back to normal, especially, as in a few weeks, it's going to be so hot that no-one will want to go out anyway.
Everyone was supposed to move to Fase 1 on March 11th. but Málaga and Granada provinces in Andalucía have been told they have to wait another week. That includes Álora. where they have just moved into Fase 1 this Monday.
Fase 2 starts next Monday 25th.May, but not for Málaga and Álora unless the 'hostelería' sector ( bar, restaurant and hotel owners) can persuade the Junta de Andalucía to reduce their sentence for good behaviour.
A couple of usually unreliable scources have told me that despite the one week delay, some Perotes (Álora people) have given the Junta the 'corte de manga' and are carrying on como si nada. (as if they didn't care). Imagine that!
Ex-Prime Minister Rajoy giving a corte de manga to the Fraud Squad
It doesn't look as though Mrs.S. and I will be able to get down to Álora before the end of August. Thank goodness we have very good neighbours who are keeping an eye on our garden there. Thanks, Julie and Alan!
Our garden here in Brum has never been better. We realised that we haven't seen it in Spring since 2002! There are plants out there we didn't know we had - bluebells, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, triffids, Jack-by-the hedge, Herb Robert and heartsease and lots of hierbajos pertinaces (stubborn weeds).
Mrs S. insists that weeds are 'just flowers in the wrong place'.
It took me two weeks to find the right place for them all. They're in black bin bags now, waiting for the day when the queue of cars outside the Council Recycling Centre (tip) goes down a bit.
Our daily walk through Moseley Bog (It's much better than it sounds) has kept us relatively sane, which is considerably saner than 'Barmy Sue' who lurks there asking people to introduce their dogs to her hamster.
The bluebells in Moseley Bog have nearly finished now. They were spectacular.
The majority of them are 'Spanish Bluebells' which 'the Victorians' brought to Britain, as it was called in those days, as garden plants.
English Bluebells
They spread so quickly, along with grey squirrels and cholera, that many prominent people, such as Charles Darwin's cousin , Sir Francis Galton, F. W. Neitzsche, H.G. Wells, G.B. Shaw, W.C. Fields and W.G.Grace started a campaign to stamp them out (literally).
Types of Bluebell.
They were worried that the immigrant Spanish Bluebell would cross-breed with the native English Bluebell, dilute the race of Bluebells and leave us with a 'mongrel' Bluebell.
A lot of, mainly rich and clever, people in those days were very worried about 'regression to the mean' ( everybody ending up not very clever and not very poor) and the only way to stop this was to stop rich and clever people mating with poor and stupid people - a bit like Spanish (inferior) Bluebells mating with (superior) English Bluebells).
Eugenics
Sir Francis Galton misinterpreted his cousin Charles Darwin's theories about 'natural selection' and invented 'Eugenics', which proposed selective breeding of humans and led to the idea of a master race.
'You must have a Eugenic Certificate'
Eugenics became very popular in the USA and resulted many years later in Donald Trump.
Galton's ideas were set to music by W.R. Wagner and used by A. Hitler to justify the mass murder of millions of people.
Anyway, the future looked bleak for the poor old Spanish Bluebell until Percy Pickles, a young Australian backpacker, earning a few pounds as a research assistent at Cambridge University stumbled on the discovery that the genetic makeup of the Spanish Bluebell is weak and so reproduction between the two plants was impossible. Phew!
The Spanish Bluebell was saved. They don't grow in Central and Southern Spain, though.
If you are still awake you probably think I've gone 'stir crazy' and you would be right. I could be out in the garden right now doing a bit of weeding if I didn't owe it to you all to keep producing these entertaining vignettes on a regular basis. I do hope that none of you has died from the coronavirus or from that last poem I wrote. No more of those - I've moved on from that phase of lockdown lunacy.
Bar news
We are missing Álora's bars.
Oofty Goofty
Juanito Sánchez (AKA The Wild Man of Borneo)
May 21st. 2020
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